Why Ohio State has a chance at the BCS title this year

Although not a favorite to end up in Pasadena this January, with the exception of playing in the Rose Bowl, Ohio State is a consensus preseason top ten team. Should OSU be a BCS favorite? No, but they should be considered at least a dark-horse contender. Aside from Florida all of the National Title contenders have weaknesses, from Oklahoma's offensive line to USC's quarterback situation.

What Ohio State is lacking in experience, they make up for in potential. A recent Sporting News article ranked the Buckeye offensive line as the second best unit in the nation. It is encouraging, to imagine what Terrelle Pryor will do with a season of experience and a full off season of development behind a great line.

The Buckeyes also will bring an underrated running game that includes Boom Herron and Brandon Saine, who showed more then a glimpse of finally realizing his potential this spring. The Buckeyes are also quite deep at the receiver position, led by potential All Big Ten candidate DeVier Posey. This depth should allow Coach Tressel to experiment with 4 and 5 receiver sets and capitalize and Pryor's athleticism by running some spread formations.

The defensive line is one the deepest and most talented in recent Buckeye history and is certainly the strong point of the defense. OSU will not have to worry about playing tired players because the line goes 8 or 9 deep.

Obviously the biggest game of the season is week two against the Trojans of USC. Will the Buckeyes be able to capitalize on the Trojans inexperienced defense and rookie quarterback is the question. Should Ohio State pull out a win, the only major road-block to an undefeated season is the Penn State game late in the season. The chances of making a title run seem adequate to get excited over the upcoming season, and if 2009 is not the year, 2010 should see OSU as a preseason top 3 ranking and a Heisman candidate at quarterback.

Shaq to the Cavs

Well for my first post I am going to be discussing the story of the day here in Cleveland; Shaquille O'Neal being traded to the Cavaliers. I like this move for a few reasons.
First off, monetarily this move does not hurt the Cavaliers going forward. The team will still have the same cap flexibility going into the 2010 off-season as before this trade was made, indeed, more because Shaq's contract is worth more then the total of Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic's.

Second, this move improves the team. Wallace is an overpaid has been who is likely to retire prior to the start of next season. He is an offensive liability and will not be missed by me. Losing Pavlovic does hurt the depth at the wing position, but he is nothing special and can easily be replaced by a draft pick tonight, or a low to mid-level free agent signing.

O'Neal gives Cleveland one of the best center situations in the league. I know he is getting old, but so is Zydrunas Ilgauskas, but together these two will be able to stay fresh and play a limited number of minutes each night, also the Cavs will be able to play Ilgauskas at crunch time to prevent teams from employing the Hack-A-Shaq philosophy. Now all fans need to worry about is the two dwarves in the backcourt.

The only problem with this trade is that it didn't happen this past February.