The Rockets won't be any good.....

But Johnathan Feigen is in mid-season form:

(Magic 104, Rockets 95: Cold shooting costs Rockets in season opener, Johnathan Feigen, Ultimate Rockets, ChronBlog)

After spending his two weeks spending roughly 80 percent of his practice time working on the Rockets defense, Kevin McHale will come home from the season opener needing to adjust.

It's really sad that Houston's NBA franchise has a beat writer who's incapable of crafting a coherent sentence.


The Rocket's aren't going to make the playoffs this year. It's unlikely fans will understand what's going on with the team as well.

Consider this: Texans final record 10-7

That's right, I'm officially predicting that the Houston Texans will not win another game this season. That's not because I think the Texans are no good (on the contrary, I've gone on record as saying they're much better this year than I thought they would be) or that Kubiak and Co. are going to falter down the stretch.

The reason I believe they are done for '11 is because they've simply had too many injuries, too many "next man up" situations to overcome. It's as if this team is snake-bitten, and as the injury count continued to mount, they've done everything with smoke and mirrors to win 10 games for the 1st time in franchise history.

Today was the first time this year the injuries really showed on the field of play. The defense, staunch all year, showed signs of cracking, and the offense, anemic since the first and second string QB's went down, couldn't mount enough of a charge to put a scare into an NFL caliber defense. Even IF Andre Johnson makes it back onto the field, the remaining Texans receiving corps are too lightweight to make much of a difference in the playoffs.

Skeptics will point to the weak record of Indianapolis and say that, surely, the Texans will win that one but I argue that it's because of that lowly record, and the fact that the Texans have already clinched, will prove to be their undoing. Indy looked like a world-beater today against the hapless Titans, and I'm predicting their offense will score again against the Texans back-up defensive coordinator. They'll then stumble into the game against Tennessee where they'll barely lose there before being dumped in the playoffs.

The good news is, once Schaub went down, there was never a chance this team was making a deep run. Getting out of the playoffs early will allow this team to focus on NEXT YEAR where, for a change, it will probably be THE year for Houston's pro football team.

Here's hoping they prove me wrong, but I'm suggesting it's more likely the Texans go 0-3 than any other scenario.

With Sumlin gone....

...UH now faces the unenviable task of hiring a third straight successful coach in a row.

I've been saying for years now that non-AQ schools with success need to think about their succession plans since their coaches ARE going to be poached by automatic B(c)S qualifying schools looking to rebuild programs. TCU did a great job of this, as has Boise St. So far Houston has struggled. The Art Briles defection was a personal failure on Briles' part (his poaching of UH assistant coaches before the bowl-game was reprehensible) the Cougars got lucky picking the right successor in Sumlin. By all accounts Sumlin has been honest and forthright with U of H, and will leave them in pretty good shape for the bowl.

But once again, the Cougars appear to have to go outside the current system to find a new coach, seemingly having no one on staff who can keep the machine rolling in the Big East. The hope, for Cougar fans, should be that UH finds and hires another young, up-and-coming coach with a flashy offense but who takes defense seriously. What they don't want to do is follow the basketball program's example and find an old retread who's looking to finish out his career quietly. I also think it's going to be important to find someone with Texas ties. Houston's biggest Big East advantage is going to be the superior players they have first shot at in recruiting.

UH football appears to be firmly back on the road to respectability. They need to find the next Kevin Sumlin, and not fall into the Kim Helton trap. Although given the fickle nature of UH fans (some are already calling Sumlin 'gutless' on the message boards, for what reason we have no idea) they won't be happy with anyone who's selected anyway.

The B(c)S: What Doyel said.....

I pretty much agree with everything written in this Gregg Doyel piece regarding the B(c)S.


If there was ever a sham system in America it's this joke of a method for determining a champion. Whether it's 'tweaking' the rules to keep certain schools from not getting in (OU) or exposing an irrational national bias that keeps out another (OSU) the plain fact is this system needs to go, and go now.

I'd be happier with the old system of conference alignments and no 'true' National champion than I am with this current system. It's a mess, the polls it are tied to are stupid, and it has no basis in reality.

And while I still have LSU and Alabama as my #1 and #2 ranked teams, that doesn't mean the latter should play in the B(c)S championship game. If you can't win your conference, you can't play for the championship.

It should be about the basics after all. If you want to bring in conference also-rans then have a playoff w/wild cards. Simple right?


Nope.