il papa's pontifications

In the first of what will be a regularly used format, the Pope presents "il papa's pontifications", a venting, ranting, diatribe of a post, focused on unveiling the sins of the sports world to all.


"Jose Canseco - The Biggest Tool in all of Baseball"
"Dear People who got mad at Roy Williams for wearing a Kansas sticker . . ."
"Hi, my name is Carmelo Anthony, and I drive drunk instead of having a driver"


These are all topics that need pontification, or pontifying, if you prefer the gerund form of a noun never meant to be a verb. There will be no regular schedule per se, for the Pope's sermon's, except that on the month of Awesome, every day will be comprised of il papa's pontifications.


Today's Topic >> The NBA Playoffs

The NBA Playoffs begin this weekend, with the first of 4 rounds of potentially 7 game series. The NBA Finals dont begin until June 5th . . . 50 days from now. So when the playoffs start on Saturday the 19th, until the earliest day the Finals could end (after game 4, assuming a sweep) on June 11th, that would make the length of the playoffs 52 days. Yes, thats 14% of the year from start to finish. Yes, Dimaggio's hit streak was 56 games in 62 days.

Pontification 1 - The first round should be shortened to best of 5 or even best of 3 games. Lest we all get to miss a game of the Cleveland vs Washington series, or dear god not the Magic vs Raptors first round match up. If these series go 7 games, who will be watching besides the fans in the stands, ESPN, and the player's moms? Not il papa.

Pontification 2 - Lets reseed the playoffs. Because of the great imbalance of the Western Conference vs the Eastern Conference, lets reseed the playoffs, without regard to East or West, so that the top 16 teams in the league get in and appropriate matchups occur. There is a nice blog piece on the topic, albeit from last April, but nonetheless appropriate. Yes, division winners automatically get in, but past that, the top teams based on record would enter the field and everyone would be reseeded. Instead of having Phoenix vs San Antonio in the first round for 2008, you would have Phoenix vs Washington and San Antonio vs the Raptors. It would work just like the NCAA tournament in a way, meaning that you wouldn't play someone from your division in the first round, but past that you could play anyone in any round.

And lastly, we would not be a papal minded blog if we did not wish Happy Birthday to Pope Benedict, who happens to be traveling in the US currently.