We have reached that time of year when both baseball and football fight for headlines and coverage.  Football will win out, as usual, which is fine.  It is currently the most popular sport in our country.  Though I prefer baseball, I can live with the media devoting more minutes to the NFL, after all, they have bills to pay too.  But please stop telling me that the reason for the NFL's popularity is it's parody.  Quit feeding into the idea that baseball is only two teams, Yankees and Red Sox, and all the other teams are just trying to field a team.  There is no more parody in football than in baseball.  In fact, over the last ten years, the leagues are nearly identical when it comes to teams playing for championships.  I went back and looked at the conference championship games and the league championship series for the past decade and was amazed at how similar both sports are.  In the last ten years, 21 different teams have played in a conference championship game in either the AFC or NFC.  That compares to 22 teams that have played for a pennant in the AL or NL.  As for teams playing in the Super Bowl and World Series, identical with 14 different franchises in both sports.  When it comes to being crowned world champion, baseball has had 9 different World Series winners the past decade and the Super Bowl has only seen 7 different teams hoist the Lombardi Trophy.  Even if you try to claim the Red Sox and Yankees dominate more than any two teams in football, you would be wrong.  Over the last ten years, the Sox and Yanks have combined to appear 9 times in the league championship series.  But in the AFC, the Patriots and Steelers have appeared 10 times in their conference title game.  It is time for the media to find other reasons for the NFL's success.  There are plenty of them I'm sure.  Just stop bashing baseball while you do it, parody is just as rampant on the diamond as it is on the gridiron. 

A couple of strange losses recently puts us a game below .500, but still ahead on dollars as we keep picking based on value.  Today I'm loving the Cubs with Zambrano on the hill at +130.  Anytime you pick the Cubs it is a risky proposition, but the Pirates seem to be fading and that's a good price on a good pitcher.  Good luck, and remember, never bet what you cant afford to lose.