Hijinks Inc.

Category: Sports

  • Prognostication 101: Man Versus Machine

    I wanted to use this article to make some quick picks for the upcoming college football season. I thought it would be fun to see if I can do a more accurate job of forecasting than the NCAA 11 video game and since real life college football starts this Thursday, this figures to be a good time to do it. NCAA 11 picks in bold, my picks in italics. At the end of the season, we’ll compare and see who fared better.

    ACC Champ
    Miami, FL (12-2)
    Virginia Tech (11-3)

    Thoughts: Whoever comes out of the ACC is going to have a number of losses. Miami has 5 very tough games this season, 3 of which are at home, so I doubt they’ll only lose 2 games this season. However, I expect them to make another big step towards that return to prominence. I could see Miami taking this conference if things go their way (or even North Carolina for that matter), but I like Virginia Tech out of the ACC. They have the week 1 clash with Boise State, but can basically coast all the way until weeks 9-11, when they play Georgia Tech at home and then on the road at North Carolina and Miami, FL. How they fare in that 3 week stretch will determine their season. My guess is they split those 4 games and then lose either in the ACC Championship or in their bowl game.

    The rest of my picks after the break. (more…)

  • T.W.I.S.T. for August 22-28

    You might call this the calm before the storm. This is the final weekend without actual real life, meaningful football on television for the rest of the year. The baseball season is winding down… there’s just not much out there.

    NFL

    The owners voted this week to jump the regular season up to 18 games, and to reduce the pre-season to only 2 games. I don’t really see how this works, it takes the coaches at least 3 games to really see what they have in the pre-season, this change could really cost some borderline players possible careers in the NFL. Looks like it’s going to happen though, so we’ll see how it goes.

    MLB

    Stephen Strasberg, pretty much the only interesting storyline over the course of the last month, has an injured elbow and has to go under the knife. Sad to see such a talented young kid have to deal with injury, but such is the life.

    NCAA Football

    Missouri RB Derrick Washington has been suspended indefinitely by the team. Apparently he’d been accused of assault, if this thing lasts very long into the season, Nebraska’s road to the Big 12 North title just got a lot easier.

    MMA

    Frankie Edgar showed the world that his first match with BJ Penn wasn’t a fluke and completely dominated Penn for 5 rounds. Randy Couture also showed boxing alone won’t translate into wins in the octagon as he polished off James Toney.

  • The MMA Minute – UFC 118 Aftermath

    We’ve heard about the “MMA vs Boxing” arguments, which would win and in which scenarios, we finally found out tonight. Here’s your quick hits:

    Quick Recaps

    • Welterweight bout: United States Nate Diaz vs. United States Marcus Davis – Diaz defeated Davis via technical submission (guillotine choke) at 4:02 of round 3.

    Diaz was expected to outwork Davis on the ground, the former boxer Davis was supposed to dominate the stand up. Diaz peppered Davis with punches and opened up a nasty cut in the first round. He continued landing punches throughout the second, and finally got him down to the ground and finished him off in round 3.

    The rest of the fights after the jump. (more…)

  • The MMA Minute – UFC 118: Edgar vs Penn 2

    Let’s face it, B.J. Penn is the best lightweight fighter of all time and one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world, his loss against Edgar in Abu Dhabi was a ‘traveshamockery‘. He just wasn’t himself in the fight and there’s no way he’s going to let it happen again. I’ll be very surprised if this fight is even close. However, there are some really good fights to back it up! Good job UFC, back to back home runs in the scheduling department. If this card comes anywhere close to the excitement of the last two pay-per-views, that will be an impressive run for the organization. Here’s the fights:

    Main card

    My first thought is that these are fairly easy to pick, but those are almost always the ones that come back to get ya in the end. But I gotta go with my gut and pick Penn to reclaim the lightweight belt, Couture to teach Toney a lesson in MMA, Maia over Miranda, Florian over Maynard (barely, it’s really hard for me to pick against Maynard, but Florian just does a fantastic job of preparing for fights and has looked head and shoulders better than everyone not named B.J. Penn), and I like Diaz over Davis. Looking forward to the fights!

  • 2010 NFL Quick Picks: NFC Edition

    Welcome back to our pre-season football series, so far we’ve hit on Phil Steele’s Top 25college football teams, I shared some quick fantasy football picks, and last week I compiled all the off-season additions for the AFC and dropped quick thoughts about each team.

    This week we’ll cover the NFC, and just like last week I referenced Foxsports.com for all of the free agent signings (accurate as of July 4),Backseatfan.com for all the trades (accurate as of June 19), and fftoolbox.com for the draft picks. I did my best to keep all the meaningful additions up to date as they happened, please forgive me if I missed some for your team. My team ratings after the jump. (more…)