In March we are going to be treated to what is supposed to be baseball's version of World Cup Soccer, the World baseball Classic. Countries will be assembling their national teams to compete in a tournement.
Now I'm as big a baseball fan as anyone in America, but does anyone really care about this contrivance? It's scheduled roughly when Major League players should be in Spring training, which means their conditioning and more importantly their game conditioning will be at their worst. Teams certainly don't want their players to get hurt in this silly exercise, and some probably will, but their isn't much the teams can do about it. The Commissioner's Office is making it happen for "The Good of the Game."
The other thing that makes no sense is who players are going to play for. If a player was born in and is a citizen of the United States, then he should play for the United States team or no one else. Mike Piazza playing for the Italian team and A-Rod trying to decide which team he wants to play for it turning an event that is already difficult to take seriously into a complete exercise in buffoonery.
Of course that leads me into the issue of Puerto Rico. Isn't Puerto Rico part of the United States? Why do they get a separate team? This isn't sports related as much as it is political. Isn't it about time we either let Puerto Rico become it's own country or make them the 51st State.
Oh well, real baseball begins pretty soon and life will be well again.
The Church Report has published their list of "The Fifty Most Influential Christians in America." I was not all that amazed, given the observed state of Christianity and discernment in America.
Number one on the list is Bishop T. D. Jakes pastor of the Potter's Field Church in Houston Texas. Second on the list if Joel Osteen, pastor of the Lakewood Church, also, interestingly enough, in Houston, Texas.
What this says of course, is that "the most influential" Christian in America is a pastor who denies one of the most central and cardinal doctrine of Christian theology, namely The Doctrine of the Trinity. He teaches and adheres to Modalism. Now the "second most influential" Christian in America is someone, who on the Larry King program could not answer a simple question about the Gospel and whether or not hearing the gospel was necessary for salvation. Even his "positive message" oriented church and following were a little stunned and there was a public apology of sorts the next day on the church website, where he admitted "dropping the ball" on the question. A question, which a first year seminary student should be able to answer in his sleep.
I'm not sure what criteria the journal used for the selections and it probably doesn't really matter. There were some good evangelicals on the list, the leaders of the Emerging Church movement were also well represented. Absent were Al Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, really the flagship seminary in the Southern Baptist Convention and John MacArthur (my boss), pastor of Grace Community Church and President of The Master's College and Seminary.
There was one oddity, given the large Catholic population, Pope Benedict could do no better than 44th on the list. But perhaps the most surprising of all, coming in at Number Fifty, was that well-known Chirstian spokesman, Dr. Phil!
Well, since everyone else has offered an opinion about the Rose Bowl game tomorrow, I'm happy to add my thoughts to the mix.
I am not one of those who thinks this will be a close game, I'm revising a little since an earlier disucssion with a collegue, but I am looking for a final score as follows:
USC Trojans 48 +/- 7
Texas Longhorns 19 +/- 7
The score at half time will be something like USC 31 Texas 10 with the Texas touchdown probably coming just before halftime.
Here is a little of my reasoning.
While Texas is an impressive team and going undefeated in 1A is not easy, Texas' schedule was not full of top 25 teams, in fact they only played three teams ranked in the top 25 at game time and only one of those, Ohio State, remained in the top 10, and Ohio State (who should have beaten Texas) is a good but not a powerful team (Sorry, Dr. Mayhue). All Ohio State proved in the Fiesta Bowl is that Notre Dame has to recruit some defensive players. Texas' schedule was also sprinkled with LaFayette, Rice, Baylor, along with a host of unimpressive Big 12 teams. Texas is terribly weak against the pass and has never even come close to having to defend the kind of offense USC can put on the field. If Vince Young is off or only has an average game Texas has no other "go to" guy to carry them.
USC on the other hand had to play six ranked teams and two huge rivalry games (Notre Dame and UCLA), along with every team they played gunning to stop the unbeaten streak (and there is a lot to that). They played two weak non-conference games (Hawaii and Arkansas in their first two games and then played nothing but PAC 10 (who will win the conference Bowl Championship if USC wins, going 4-1 in the bowl games) games, except for Notre Dame and the highly ranked Fresno State team. The defense got both healthy and better at the right time. UCLA was ranked 11th when they played (and probably would have been undefeated and ranked 3rd had it not been for their strange lapse against Arizona). UCLA had one of the top offenses in the country and USC held them to essentially nothing. USC has two Heisman winners. Leinart, Bush or White is capable of winning the game by themselves. When USC lines up lines up Bush and White together along with two 1,000 yard receivers and one of the top tight ends in 1A, there is just too many options, essentially Texas cannot afford to blitz and they cannot afford to double-team very often. Add to that perhaps the top offensive line in 1A and Texas is in serious trouble.
On the defensive side, Texas will have to face a much healthier and improving USC defense. I think the big thing here will be that Vince Young will have to face linebackers who are just as fast as he is. The USC defense may not be as physically dominating as they were last year, but they are a lot faster and they still can hit hard.
Of no particular consequence in terms of eternal values, but I enjoy speculating. I could be wrong, but hey, if you're going to have a blog you better take a chance once in a while.