FDH Lounge Show #125: November 30, 2010

By Rick Morris

Another big milestone is upon us: Episode #125 of THE FDH LOUNGE (Tuesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com) – and it happens to be our first one since making the move from Wednesday nights.

After The Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries and This Week in The FDH Lounge, we review some of the high points of the first 125 programs and preview some segments to be added shortly – such as “Those Damn Hipsters with Kyle Ross.” This precedes an interview with MLB Network analyst and Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Tom Verducci about Hot Stove Baseball. Then we will single out for encore play one of our favorite moments between the 100^th and 125^th show: our epic conversation with “The Mayor,” former MLB All-Star and MLB Network broadcaster Sean Casey.

As Hour Two starts, we segue into another look at the Hot Stove Baseball season of transactions before playing our second annual Hot Stove Predictions Game. Did we say second annual? Apparently so. Well, the next segment is our second annual Time Person of the Year Fantasy Draft. Guidelines and draft board are here. Ah, but we’re not done with the participatory fun at that point as we get to our fifth annual College Hoops Team Fantasy Draft. Guidelines and draft board are here.

Then, THE FANTASY DRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER closes out the show with our big NFL Week 13 preview. We remind you also to consult our new fantasy – and non-fantasy – hoops guide, FANTASY HOOPS DRAFTOLOGY 2010. Click and enjoy! Also, remember that for your football needs, you should be using our FANTASY FOOTBALL DRAFTOLOGY 2010 as your guide through the season, along with our weekly fantasy newsletter at The FantasyDrafthelp.com Blog – which, during the football season, has your list of which players to start each week.

Later in Hour Three, we prove yet again that you can never say “I’ve done everything for you, you’ve done nothing for me,” as we welcome in one of our more famous guests in the history of the show, singer-actor Rick Springfield. His strikingly personal memoir Late, Late at Night lays bare his demons, especially a decades-long battle with depression that was conducted away from the public eye. We’ll talk about all facets of his evolving career. We end with Bob O'Brien from the Cavs Chants blog, the one that is going to take over the Cavs-Heat game on TNT Thursday night.

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 on iTunes. Also, you can sample THE FDH LOUNGE VAULT, a compilation of our best interviews and roundtables, now every weeknight from 6-7 PM, also on SportsTalkNetwork.com.

Time Person of the Year fantasy draft

By Rick Morris

We at FDH are holding our second annual Time Person of the Year fantasy draft. It was certainly very fun for us to stage last year. We’ll be doing so on our 125^th Episode of THE FDH LOUNGE (Tuesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com).

The scoring is simple: pick the winner. Ideally, such a contest is conducted with four owners making six picks or five owners making five picks in a standard serpentine draft.

We took the 25 finalists named by Time and ranked them on this draft board. The number in parentheses is the ranking in a poll on the site as of November 28, 2010. The web page with links to all bios of finalists is here.

TOP TIER

1 “The Unemployed American” (8)

2 Tea Party leader Sarah Palin (10)

3 Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (17)

4 US President Barack Obama (7)

5 Talk show host Glenn Beck (5)

6 New British Prime Minister David Cameron (13)

7 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (3)

8 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (11)

9 Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (4)

SECOND TIER

10 The Chilean Miners (9)

11 Would-be Ground Zero mosque leader Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (16)

12 Federal regulators Elizabeth Warren, Mary Schapiro and Sheila Bair (19)

13 Former BP CEO Tony Hayward (25)

14 Chinese President Hu Jintao (14)

15 Tea Party financiers David and Charles Koch (21)

THIRD TIER

16 Pop star Lady Gaga (2)

17 NBA star LeBron James (22)

18 Afghan President Hamid Karzai (23)

FOURTH TIER

19 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (15)

20 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (1)

21 Apple CEO Steve Jobs (6)

FIFTH TIER

22 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (20)

23 Chinese dissident and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (12)

24 Scientist and synthetic DNA creator J. Craig Venter (18)

25 Novelist Jonathan Franzen (24)

Hot Stove League prediction game

By Rick Morris

We at FDH are holding our second annual Hot Stove League prediction game. We’ll be doing so on our 125^th Episode of THE FDH LOUNGE (Tuesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com).

Our FDH baseball analysts will be predicting the final destinations for each of the following players. We highly recommend this as a game for you to play with your hardball-loving friends.

Cliff Lee

Carl Crawford

Jayson Werth

Paul Konerko

Adrian Beltre

Rafael Soriano

Carl Pavano

Adam Dunn

Manny Ramirez

Adam LaRoche

Brandon Webb

Trevor Hoffman

The Lounge moves to Tuesdays, starting with #125

By Rick Morris

This week’s 125^th episode of THE FDH LOUNGE on SportsTalkNetwork.com not only marks a milestone – Quasquicentennial Anniversary Episode! – but it also, coincidentally, will be our first one on our new night. Starting this week, we move up exactly 24 hours in the rotation at the Sports Talk Network, now on Tuesdays from 7-10 PM EST.

We also moved approximately two years ago, roughly halfway through the history of the program. The first 39 episodes were held from January 14, 2007 to November 30, 2008 on a biweekly basis on Sunday nights before making the jump to weeknight programming and new episodes every week starting on December 10, 2008. And as the Sports Talk Network makes its move back towards emphasizing nationally-oriented programming – like The FDH Lounge – and away from the heavier concentration on our flagship city of Cleveland, we are glad to support a move that we have thought for years was the best direction for the network carrying our program.

When we hit Episode #100 back on April 28 of this year, I wrote at some length about my feelings of fulfillment and accomplishment at having received the chance to lead such a talented, dedicated and varied crew forward as we charted the brand-new terrain called “nothing is off-topic.” I have nothing to add to that except to note with pride and happiness that the seven months between #100 and #125 have been marked by more big guests – famous and otherwise – as well as more great segments with our Dignitaries, more inventiveness in terms of the direction of the show and more of what made us what we were in the first place. That last point refers to the strides we have made in the past 25 episodes at reaching back out to core Dignitaries whose schedules had rendered regular appearances difficult. Contributors like Tim Foust and Ken Detwiler have helped shape this program from the outset and even before that and the chance for me to have even more pieces to move around our chessboard is almost indescribable for me.

In addition to thanking all of our FDH Lounge Dignitaries, of course I have to mention my partners, who have each picked up an additional title since the 100^th Episode. Senior Editor/Creative Director Jason Jones continues to be very strong as an “idea man” and in controlling all aspects of our imaging. Whether we’re talking audio production, video production or artwork regarding issues like our various logos, Jason brings it like nobody else could. And Senior Producer/Vice President for Strategic Programming Steve Cirvello – our vaunted “FDH New York Bureau” – has continued to blaze his tireless and fearless path of forging insanely valuable relationships for our show and our company. Our “black belt networker” books guests that continue to amaze and he continues to confront and surmount a variety of challenges as he exposes us to the right people through sheer force of will. Our rate of growth as a show is unimaginable without his efforts.

Most of all, thanks to you, our viewers, for patronizing our show and proving that there is an audience for something that is unique and does not seek to be a dumbed-down, cookie-cutter version of what everyone else in the talk/variety biz is trying to accomplish. We know that you will follow us to our new night – either live or via archives that include free episodes through iTunes – and we’ll keep working to enlighten and entertain on every interesting topic under the sun as we move into 2011 and beyond.

Pro Gridiron Surround: Week 12

By Rick Morris

The 21st Century Media Alliance will be joining to provide live, as-it-happens coverage from the pro and college gridirons this fall, with on-the-ground coverage aggregated from a variety of outside media sources all over the country via Twitter. Today's presentation marks our 12th effort on the pro side.

PLEASE NOTE: While the Cover It Live software may classify the liveblog as being in "Standby," it is continuously updating from a variety of sources, averaging several entries per minute during the height of the day's action. You need only to click the play button to view the continuous updates and follow what has already been posted at any time. We hope you enjoy.

Pro Gridiron Surround: Week 12

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume III, 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.

NFL picks Week 12

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from The FDH New York Bureau and FDH Lounge Dignitary Sean Trench for The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays:

ME (2-1 last week, 15-16-2 overall)

Atlanta -2 over Green Bay

Philadelphia -3 over Chicago

Pittsburgh -6 ½ over Buffalo (Lock was 1-0 last week, 5-4-2 overall)

BUREAU (3-0 last week, 16-17 overall)

Cleveland -10 over Carolina

Denver -4 over St. Louis

Houston -6 ½ over Tennessee

SEAN (1-2 last week, 9-24 overall)

New York Giants -7 over Jacksonville

Denver -4 over St. Louis

Baltimore -7 ½ over Tampa Bay

MY OTHER PICKS (7-9 last week, including my Big Three, 71-86-8 overall, including our Thanksgiving 2-1 on Twitter)

Minnesota +1 over Washington

Houston -6 ½ over Tennessee

Jacksonville +7 over New York Giants

Carolina +10 over Cleveland

Baltimore -7 ½ over Tampa Bay

Miami +2 ½ over Oakland

St. Louis +4 over Denver

San Diego +3 over Indianapolis

San Francisco -1 over Arizona

Kansas City -2 over Seattle

NFL Week 12 power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous rankings in parentheses.

TOP TIER – LEGIT SUPER BOWL CONTENDERS

1 Atlanta (1)

2 New York Jets (2)

3 New England (3)

4 Baltimore (4)

5 Pittsburgh (5)

6 New Orleans (7)

7 Philadelphia (9)

8 New York Giants (6)

SECOND TIER – LEGIT PLAYOFF CONTENDERS

9 Indianapolis (11)

10 Green Bay (8)

11 Tampa Bay (12)

12 Chicago (13)

13 San Diego (16)

14 Kansas City (15)

15 Jacksonville (20)

THIRD TIER – PLAYOFF LONGSHOTS

16 Tennessee (10)

17 Miami (17)

18 Washington (21)

19 Oakland (14)

20 Seattle (18)

21 St. Louis (19)

22 Dallas (25)

23 Cleveland (24)

24 Houston (22)

FOURTH TIER – BOTTOM FEEDERS

25 Minnesota (23)

26 Arizona (26)

27 San Francisco (27)

28 Detroit (29)

29 Denver (28)

30 Buffalo (32)

31 Cincinnati (30)

32 Carolina (31)

BIGGEST RISERS: Jacksonville (5 spots), Dallas, San Diego and Washington (3 spots)

BIGGEST FALLERS: Tennessee (6 spots) and Oakland (5 spots)

RANKINGS BY DIVISION – 1 POINT PER RANKING SPOT FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL TEAM, LOWEST SCORE IS BEST

1 NFC South (50)

2 AFC East (52)

3 AFC North (63)

4 AFC South (64)

5 NFC East (65)

6T NFC North (75)

6T AFC West (75)

8 NFC West (94)

NCAA football picks Week Thirteen

By Rick Morris

Last week: 2-2-1

Overall: 45-37-3

Texas +3 1/2 over Texas A&M

West Virginia +3 over Pittsburgh

Kent State +3 1/2 over Ohio

Auburn +4 over Alabama

Michigan +16 1/2 over Ohio State

Florida State -2 over Florida

Clemson +3 over South Carolina

Georgia -13 1/2 over Georgia Tech

Oklahoma +2 1/2 over Oklahoma State

Arkansas -3 1/2 over LSU

Pro Gridiron Surround: Week 11

By Rick Morris

The 21st Century Media Alliance will be joining to provide live, as-it-happens coverage from the pro and college gridirons this fall, with on-the-ground coverage aggregated from a variety of outside media sources all over the country via Twitter. Today's presentation marks our 11th effort on the pro side.

PLEASE NOTE: While the Cover It Live software may classify the liveblog as being in "Standby," it is continuously updating from a variety of sources, averaging several entries per minute during the height of the day's action. You need only to click the play button to view the continuous updates and follow what has already been posted at any time. We hope you enjoy.

NFL picks Week 11

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from The FDH New York Bureau and FDH Lounge Dignitary Sean Trench for The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays:

ME (1-2 last week, 13-15-2 overall)

Green Bay -3 over Minnesota

San Francisco -3 ½ over Tampa Bay

Atlanta -3 over St. Louis -- my 1,000-Star Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week (Lock was 0-1 last week, 4-4-2 overall)

BUREAU (0-3 last week, 13-17 overall)

Baltimore -11 over Carolina

New Orleans -11 ½ over Seattle

Indianapolis +4 over New England

SEAN (2-1 last week, 8-22 overall)

Philadelphia -3 over New York Giants

New England -4 over Indianapolis

New York Jets -7 over Houston

MY OTHER PICKS (8-6 last week, including my Big Three, 62-77-8 overall and including our loser Thursday night)

Oakland +7 over Pittsburgh

New York Jets -7 over Houston

Carolina +11 over Baltimore

Tennessee -7 over Washington

Dallas -6 ½ over Detroit

Buffalo +5 ½ over Cincinnati

Jacksonville -1 ½ over Cleveland

Kansas City -8 ½ over Arizona

New Orleans -11 ½ over Seattle

New England -4 over Indianapolis

New York Giants +3 over Philadelphia

Denver +9 ½ over San Diego

NFL Week 11 power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous rankings in parentheses.

TOP TIER – LEGIT SUPER BOWL CONTENDERS

1 Atlanta (2)

2 New York Jets (4)

3 New England (6)

4 Baltimore (3)

5 Pittsburgh (1)

6 New York Giants (5)

7 New Orleans (7)

SECOND TIER – LEGIT PLAYOFF CONTENDERS

8 Green Bay (9)

9 Philadelphia (10)

10 Tennessee (8)

11 Indianapolis (11)

12 Tampa Bay (14)

13 Chicago (13)

THIRD TIER – PLAYOFF POSSIBILITIES

14 Oakland (16)

15 Kansas City (12)

16 San Diego (17)

17 Miami (15)

18 Seattle (23)

19 St. Louis (19)

20 Jacksonville (20)

21 Washington (18)

22 Houston (21)

23 Minnesota (22)

FOURTH TIER – WOULD BE RANKED HIGHER (#17 SPECIFICALLY), BUT NO SHOT AT PLAYOFFS

24 Cleveland (25)

FIFTH TIER – BOTTOM FEEDERS

25 Dallas (30)

26 Arizona (24)

27 San Francisco (27)

28 Denver (28)

29 Detroit (29)

30 Cincinnati (26)

SIXTH TIER – THE WORST OF THE WORST

31 Carolina (31)

32 Buffalo (32)

BIGGEST RISERS: Dallas and Seattle (5 spots), Kansas City and New England (3 spots)

BIGGEST FALLERS: Cincinnati and Pittsburgh (4 spots), Washington (3 spots)

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume III, Issue XLV

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: 3-2

Overall: 43-35-2

Michigan +4 over Wisconsin

Iowa +3 over Ohio State

Miami +2 over Virginia Tech

Texas A&M +2 ½ over Nebraska

Illinois -8 over Northwestern

FDH Lounge Show #124: November 17, 2010

By Rick Morris

Episode #124 of THE FDH LOUNGE (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com) brings the variety to an even greater degree than most weeks!

After The Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries and This Week in The FDH Lounge, we start in a big way with longtime baseball broadcaster Chip Caray. He covered the Atlanta Braves for a good chunk of Bobby Cox’s tenure, including the final years, so he’ll be able to share some thoughts on what comes next for the vaunted franchise. Additionally, Chip’s experience covering baseball on a national level makes him well-positioned to break down what should be a very eventful Hot Stove League. Then, we preview an upcoming segment on The Lounge involving two friends who have probably seen more sporting events in more venues than any two people in the history of civilization.

At the top of Hour Two, we sift through the aftermath of the midterm elections with old friend Colin Delany of Epolitics and one of his fellow members of the left side of the political spectrum, Ellis Henican of Newsday and Fox News. How much can get done in the new Congress and will President Obama be able to pivot positively off of Speaker-elect John Boehner and the Tea Party or will he be dragged down by outgoing speaker/new minority leader Nancy Pelosi? We’ll examine the entire picture. At the bottom of the hour, we welcome back in our pal Rich Mancuso – a member of The 21^st Century Media Alliance with his Keep It In The Ring website – and his old radio broadcasting cohort, ESPN Radio’s Jody MacDonald. Our senior producer The FDH New York Bureau was a big fan of their overnight pro wrestling show on WFAN back in the early 1990s and we reunited them on the air for the first time since then back on Episode #101 back on May 5 of this year. We’ll talk specialties with both of them – Rich is a noted boxing analyst and was in Dallas for the big Pacman fight and Jody is knee-deep into the world of horse racing – before we get into common areas of interest: baseball and, of course, wrestling.

Speaking of wrestling, Hour Three takes us into a discussion with another returning guest, author Irv Muchnick. His book Chris & Nancy: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death rocked the world of sports entertainment and is being made into a motion picture. He covered the Linda McMahon Senate race extensively and will give his thoughts on how the race did and did not affect the industry dominated by the McMahon family.

Then, THE FANTASY DRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER closes out the show with our big NFL Week 9 preview. We remind you also to consult our new fantasy – and non-fantasy – hoops guide, FANTASY HOOPS DRAFTOLOGY 2010. Click and enjoy! Also, remember that for your football needs, you should be using our FANTASY FOOTBALL DRAFTOLOGY 2010 as your guide through the season, along with our weekly fantasy newsletter at The FantasyDrafthelp.com Blog – which, during the football season, has your list of which players to start each week.

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 on iTunes. Also, you can sample THE FDH LOUNGE VAULT, a compilation of our best interviews and roundtables, now every weeknight from 6-7 PM, also on SportsTalkNetwork.com.

Pro Gridiron Surround: Week 10

By Rick Morris

The 21st Century Media Alliance will be joining to provide live, as-it-happens coverage from the pro and college gridirons this fall, with on-the-ground coverage aggregated from a variety of outside media sources all over the country via Twitter. Today's presentation marks our tenth effort on the pro side.

PLEASE NOTE: While the Cover It Live software may classify the liveblog as being in "Standby," it is continuously updating from a variety of sources, averaging several entries per minute during the height of the day's action. You need only to click the play button to view the continuous updates and follow what has already been posted at any time. We hope you enjoy.

NFL picks Week 10

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from The FDH New York Bureau and FDH Lounge Dignitary Sean Trench for The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays:

ME (1-2 last week, 12-13-2 overall)

Tennessee -2 over Miami

New York Jets -3 over Cleveland

Minnesota -1 ½ over Chicago -- my 1,000-Star Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week (Lock was 1-0 last week, 4-2-2 overall)

BUREAU (2-1 last week, 13-14 overall)

Arizona -3 over Seattle

Tennessee -2 over Miami

New York Giants -13 ½ over Dallas

SEAN (2-1 last week, 8-19 overall)

Buffalo -3 over Detroit

Indianapolis -7 over Cincinnati

San Francisco -6 over St. Louis

MY OTHER PICKS (4-8-1 last week, including my Big Three, 55-70-8 overall and including our winner on Atlanta Thursday night on Twitter)

Indianapolis -7 over Cincinnati

Houston +1 ½ over Jacksonville

Buffalo -3 over Detroit

Tampa Bay -7 over Carolina

Denver +1 over Kansas City

St. Louis +6 over San Francisco

Seattle +3 over Arizona

Dallas +13 ½ over New York Giants

Pittsburgh -4 ½ over New England

Philadelphia -3 over Washington