Sports Editor

What a great weekend.

Does it get any better than Mother’s Day? Really. OK, you don’t have to answer.

But I’m serious. I want to give a big shout-out to all the moms out there holding down the fort while us husbands do our thing. Without you, we’re lost. No doubt.

I especially want to recognize my wife—the Busy Girl—for all she does for me and our two girls. Without her, not only do I not have any clean clothes, I wouldn’t know how to survive.

Other than taking my wife out to eat at Outback for her special day (can you say cheese fries ... mmmmmm), Mother’s Day was pretty uneventful. We did nothing. And when I say nothing, other than breathing and the occasional blinking, I mean nothing.

It was the perfect day. And she enjoyed it, too. I think.

Oh, you want to read about sports? OK.

*** The Opelika High baseball team is riding high after sweeping Prattville in the semifinal series of the Class 6A playoffs. The Bulldogs will now take on Hoover in the best-of-three series beginning Friday at 10 a.m. in Montgomery. The first game will be Friday. The second game is Saturday at 10 a.m. and the if-needed game is slated for 1 p.m. Saturday. All games will be at Patterson Field.

What are Opelika’s chances? I’d say pretty darn good. The Bulldogs are 41-2. That’s impressive, I don’t care who you are.

Opelika’s got a deep pitching staff and can hit up and down the lineup. And it doesn’t hurt to have 13 seniors, all of who contribute, on the roster. There’s nothing like leadership to go along with talent.

My guess, Opelika sweeps Hoover. No disrespect to the Bucs, but this Opelika team is a team of destiny. And it’s hard to get in the way of that.

*** Collin Mickle pretty much summed up what’s going on with AU head baseball coach Tom Slater in today’s story.

Auburn AD Jay Jacobs said he’s going to wait until the end of the season before he makes any decisions on Slater’s future at Auburn. I think that’s fair. Let the season play out, then make the call.

Either way, it’s not an easy call. Regardless of what the popular opinon is.

But, and everyone who’s ever worked in this profession knows, a coach is only as good as his record. And in the “what have you done for me lately?” world of college athletics, if that record (the bottom line) isn’t good, then it’s only a matter of time before you’re shown the door.

Fair? Hey, it has nothing to do with fair. College sports is a business. Period.

*** Three cheers for the triple play.

In case you haven’t heard, Cleveland Indians second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera turned the 14th unassisted triple play in major league history on Monday night against Toronto.

I’m all about the triple play. It’s kind of like Moe’s Triple Lindy, but without the guacamole. Tasty.

Sports Writer/Designer

This ain’t your older brother’s SEC.

After dominating the baseball world throughout the 90s and the early part of this decade, the conference seems to be a bit on the down side this year.

While that may not exactly be great come Regional time, it’s made for a highly entertaining conference race this season.

With one week to go, only one team (Georgia, who has clinched the regular season crown) has clinched a spot in Hoover for the SEC Tourney and only one team (Mississippi State) is assured of not being there headed to the final weekend.

That being said, as AU beat writer Collin Mickle pointed out, Auburn and, by extension, Tennessee need virtual miracles to make the field.

Here are the conference standings at this moment:

East:
Georgia 19-7-1
Vanderbilt 15-11
Kentucky 14-13
Florida 14-13
South Carolina 13-14
Tennessee 11-16

West:
LSU 15-11-1
Alabama 14-13
Ole Miss 14-13
Arkansas 13-13
Auburn 11-16
Mississippi St. 7-20

And here are the overall standings (I could be wrong on some of these tiebreakers and if so, please let me know):

1. Georgia 19-7-1
2. Vanderbilt 15-11
3. LSU 15-11-1
4. Kentucky 14-13
5. Alabama 14-13
6. Florida 14-13
7. Ole Miss 14-13
8. Arkansas 13-13
9. South Carolina 13-14
10. Auburn 11-16
11. Tennessee 11-16
12. Mississippi St. 7-20

And here are this weekend’s series, which begin Thursday:

Alabama at Georgia
Arkansas at Mississippi St.
LSU at Auburn
Vanderbilt at Florida
Ole Miss at Kentucky
Tennessee at South Carolina

When it comes to Auburn, they’ll have to sweep the hottest team in the SEC (LSU, who has swept three straight conference series and won 12 in a row overall) and hope for Arkansas to get swept by the worst team in the conference (which could be mildly possible, given that it’ll be Ron Polk’s final home series at Mississippi State), and for Kentucky and South Carolina to get swept at home.

Of the five teams immediately ahead of Auburn, they only have the tiebreaker over two of them (Kentucky and Arkansas, but the Arkansas one doesn’t matter since the Hogs will only play 29 games).

As for how everyone else will do, there’s really no telling. Collin and I have had virtually the same discussion at every meeting since about the fifth week of conference play, in that every time we think somebody’s moving to the forefront or falling back to the pack, the next week changes everything.

But looking at things, I’d say it’s highly probable that either Alabama or Florida could get knocked out of the tournament altogether, but Alabama has been playing good baseball of late and should give Georgia a good series, even if it comes out on the losing end. It’s much more likely that you’ll see Kentucky knock Ole Miss out, opening the door for South Carolina. If you had to ask me for my best guess for how the standings might look this time Saturday night, I might say this:

1. Georgia 21-8-1
2. Vanderbilt 17-12
3. Kentucky 17-13
4. LSU 16-13-1*
5. South Carolina 16-14
6. Arkansas 15-14
7. Alabama 15-15
8. Florida 15-15

*I think Auburn will play some inspired baseball in their series with LSU this weekend at Plainsman Park, given everything that’s at stake. I could see them getting 2-of-3 from LSU, but I’m just not sure they’ll have enough to get the series sweep. And even then, as you can see, it’s highly likely that that won’t be enough.

All in all, it should be a wild weekend. I’ll do my best to post here with all the happenings and keep the newspaper’s pages filled with all the information you need.

Sports Writer/Designer

The game may or may not be over (I’m watching on about a 20-minute delay) but it’s been over for a while.

In a performance that brings to mind Footsteps Falco’s disastrous 1996 Sugar Bowl (yes I stole this joke from Bill Simmons), the Hawks simply fell apart early and allowed the Celtics to crush them like bugs.

So what did we learn from the Hawks over the last two weeks?

We learned that they are unbelievably gifted athletically (which any of the eight or nine Hawks fans prior to the playoffs would’ve been able to tell you beforehand), we learned that the Celtics may need to work on their mental toughness and we saw definitive proof that the Hawks are just a piece or two from becoming contenders again.

But the Hawks really shouldn’t have even been there.

A 37-45 team should never be rewarded with a playoff berth, especially when a team as good as the Warriors in the Western Conference gets left out.

There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years about the playoffs being all screwed up, and there have been plenty of examples in recent years of the two best teams meeting before the finals.

So, I present to you my system for making the playoffs better. (This is a post I’ve been meaning to make since they first gave me a blog, so I apologize that it’s not particularly timely. I just now have the time to do it.)

First of all, just take the top 16 teams in the league, no dividing things up by conference.

Obviously, this presents some problems in making sure divisions and conferences still matter, so my solution is to make the top six seeds the division winners, and give them homecourt advantage regardless of whether the team they’re playing has a better record or not.

So once you’ve played out the first round, then you can reseed. The NFL and NHL do it, why can’t the NBA?

So this is what the playoffs might look like under my system.

No. 1 Boston vs. No. 16 Portland
No. 8 Houston vs. No. 9 Phoenix
No. 5 Utah vs. No. 12 Golden State
No. 4 New Orleans vs. No. 13 Cleveland
No. 6 Orlando vs. No. 11 Denver
No. 3 L.A. Lakers vs. No. 14 Washington
No. 7 San Antonio vs. No. 10 Dallas
No. 2 Detroit vs. No. 15 Toronto

I’d say in many ways that’s a lot better than what we wound up with. The top three seeds’ series would be a little bland, but the last five would all be highly entertaining (especially Utah vs. Golden State). Why wouldn’t this be a good thing?

And then if we’re just spit-balling how the first round would go, here’s what the second round might look like:
No. 1 Boston vs. No. 11 Denver
No. 2 Detroit vs. No. 9 Phoenix
No. 3 L.A. Lakers vs. No. 7 San Antonio
No. 4 New Orleans vs. No. 5 Utah

If you’ve followed the NBA at all this year, all four of these series make your mouth water. I’m excited just thinking about it.

I won’t try to project all those series, but doesn’t this sound exciting? Maybe David Stern will take some time out of screwing over Seattle to read this blog.