It’s time for the media to get all giddy about absolutely nothing once again. The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox are playing each other again and that means that the media will act like the entire country cares when in reality only Boston and New York fans are paying attention.

And why should the rest of us care? Do we pay attention when the Tigers play the Indians? For that matter, do we pay attention when the Tigers play the White Sox? The White Sox just won the Series three years ago, and the Tigers were in the Series two years ago. The Yankees haven’t been to a Series and many years.

So why do we care that the Yankees are playing the Red Sox? Well, the short answer is we don’t. But the media still doesn’t get it. Or they do but they’re pretending that they don’t. Sure, we all cared a few years ago when the Red Sox came back from 3-0 down in the ALCS and went on to win the Series. That was great. And maybe that’s why the media - a very slow moving organism that’s always lagging about 5 years behind - is still shoving this match-up down on our throats.

Someone please let them know that the rest of baseball couldn’t care less. Seriously. We don’t care that Chien Ming Wang threw a two hitter last night and the Yankees won 4-1. Because in the grand scheme of things is what just the second place team in the AL East taking on the last place team in the Al East. Wow, how exciting.

Now, both the Yankees and the Red Sox will compete for a spot in the Series. But I don’t both of them will even get into the playoffs. There are too many other good teams in the American league. And what would the media do if they both missed the playoffs?

I know.

They’d still hype-up every single meeting between these two teams next year.

Major league baseball has been back for about a week and so far there have been some surprises. The Boston Red Sox haven’t started out as well as many thought they would. The New York Yankees have once again been slow out of the gate. And the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles have started out playing much better than most thought they would. However, the biggest surprise has to be the Detroit Tigers. That’s the 0-8 Detroit Tigers.

In the off-season the Tigers acquired Edgar Renteria to play shortstop and then they made a huge trade for third baseman Cabrera and Willis. That was supposed to vault the Tigers to the top of the American league. Yet they sit here with absolutely no wins yet this season.

And the Tigers have lost their first 7 games in horrible fashion. They have been bad with their pitching, their hitting, and their defense. At times this team has looked more like a mediocre Triple A club then a top-class MLB team.

Certainly there is still a lot of time left in this season. And it is too early to hit the panic button but things aren’t looking good so far. And if things stay bad then it just might be that big trade that is pointed to as where this team went wrong.

The Tigers gave up a lot of young talent to get Cabrera and Willis. Included were a great young arm, Miller, and a future great outfielder, Cameron Maybin. And they also took Brandon Inge off of third base and put him in a utility role. So they gave-up a lot of defense at third for a great bat. But so far Cabrera’s bet has beeb dealy silent.

So the Tigers do have time to turn things around but the turn around would have to be dramatic because the Tigers haven’t gotten close to winning a game. They aren’t just losing 3-2 or even 6-4 but they are losing by scores like 12-1 and 5-0. And if they don’t get a lot better really quickly, this will go down as one of the worst teams with greta talent in history.

Well, as disappointing as most of the two games in the semi-finals were, the National Championship Game was just that great.

Memphis and Kansas battled it out for 40 minutes but needed 5 more minutes to decide a winner. That’s because Kansas hit a three pointer just before the buzzer to tie the game at the end of regulation.

For much of the later stages of regulation it looked like Memphis would take the title. They held a consistent lead of 4-7 points for the final few minutes of the game. But then their poor foul shooting finally caught up with them. The biggest miss was the first of two foul shots when freshman Derrick Rose missed a free throw that would’ve put Memphis up three with one more foul shot coming. Rose did make the second one but that only gave Memphis a three point lead. A Kansas three sent it to overtime where the Jayhawks pretty much dominated. You could just see that Memphis was shocked that they didn’t win the game in regulation. The Tigers simply couldn’t keep fighting hard enough to win their 39th game of the season.

So the Kansas Jayhawks win their first championship since 1988. They’ve been close to winning it a few times in the last few years but never did they seal the deal like they did last night.

Give credit to Kansas. They had to beat two very good teams in the Final Four in order to win the Championship. And give credit to Bill Self (Kansas coach) too.

So now we’ll begin the watch to see if and when Derrick Rose declares for the draft. I would think it’s only a matter of time before he goes to the NBA. I would be shocked if we see him playing as a sophomore.

As for Kansas, they stand to lose some good players too. But they are so deep that they will still be very good next year. Not that they care about next year right now. And why should they? They are the National Champions. And they deserve it.

Well, the Madness is just about done. The Champions of college basketball will be crowned tonight and it will either be the Memphis Tigers or the Kansas Jayhawks. Both of these teams looked very impressive on Saturday.

The Memphis Tigers handled the UCLA Bruins easily while the Kansas Jayhawks dominated the North Carolina Tar Heels for large portions of their game. Both final scores were rather lopsided. So the question is: Will tonight’s game be close of will the trend continue and one of the teams run away with it?

A major concern for one of the teams - the Memphis Tigers - has to be that their star player, Derrick Rose, is apparently battling a stomach illness. Rose missed the press conference yesterday because he was too ill to attend. If Rose can’t play or if he is limited because of his health then suddenly the Odds tip majorly to favor Kansas.

Certainly it would take a lot of the pressure off of Kansas Jayhawk’s coach Bill Self if he can come away with a National Championship. No longer would people question his ability to win the big game.

Now, Memphis has told the press that Rose will be playing in the title game and I would think it would take more than a stomach illness to keep him out of this game but Rose wasn’t able to sit through the team meeting last night. So we’ll see.

To me it’s not just a question of whether Rose plays - I can pretty much guarantee he will. But it’s also a question of how effective he will be. Will he be weak? Will he mentally into the game? We he be able to log major minutes? Because Memphis will need Rose to be at his best.

I’m not saying that Rose is Memphis’s only good player, because he certainly isn’t. But he is the best player on the team and he is a major match-up problem for any team that tried to guard him. And when he can’t be guarded by just one player then he opens the offense for all his teammates.

But we’ll see what happens tonight. Kansas comes into the game riding high and Memphis has to be concerned with Rose’s health. Still the game will be decided on the court.

I must say I am shocked by the outcome of the games on Saturday night. The results were the exact opposite of what I expected from both games. I never dreamed that the National Championship game would be played between the Memphis Tigers and the Kansas Jayhawks. Yet here we are after Memphis took out UCLA and Kansas knocked out North Carolina.

Memphis was absolutely dominant in their game against the UCLA Bruins. I couldn’t believe how that game went. O was expecting UCLA to come out and set the tone with their tenacious defense. Instead Memphis made it look easy and pretty much scored at will. UCLA was simply no match to keep up with the Tigers. So the Tigers jumped out to an early lead and then never looked back. They won it easily by a score of 78-63.

I was even more surprised by how the second game of the night went. In fact, I was shocked. I expected UNC to handle Kansas without too much trouble at all. Instead, it was nearly the other way around. It looked like the Tar Heels didn’t even know a game was being played until about 10 minutes into the game. UNC was down by about 20 points before they even started competing.

North Carolina did make things very interesting in the second half. They had the lead within 4 or 5 points a couple times but they just couldn’t get over the hump. And then it seemed as if they were suddenly out of gas and the Jayhawks went on a run to close out the game. The final score was Kansas 84 and North Carolina 66.

So that sets up Memphis against Kansas for the Championship. I would try to make a prediction or at least predict that this game will be close but I’ve been so wrong lately that I won’t even try.

At some point people are going to have to admit that the Memphis Tigers just might be one of the best teams to ever play in college basketball. They are now 38-1 and looking at a National Championship Game. And if they beat the Kansas Jayhawks in that game on Monday night then they would mean they’ve just lost one game all season.

But along with their record, Memphis has been very convincing in the way they’ve won their games. Challanger after challenger has stood up to try to take on Memphis and one by one Memphis has beaten them. And they’ve beaten almost all of them convincingly.

On Saturday Memphis faced a very good UCLA Bruins team. UCLA had a great defense and they could also score the ball in many different ways. Well, Memphis went into the game and absolutely dominated the Bruins. They pretty much shredded the UCLA defense and walked away with a convincing 78-63 win. This game was pretty much over 10 minutes into the game. Memphis was obviously the better team and they held a comfortable lead from mid-way through the first half all the way until the end of the game.

If Memphis can handle Kansas easily on Monday night then people will have to include them when the best teams in the history of the game are mentioned. Going 39-1 (which is what they’ll be if they win) and winning almost every game comfortably would be plenty of evidence to point to the fact that Memphis is one of the best teams ever.

So we will see what happens on Monday night and it won’t be any easy task since Kansas is coming off a very impressive win over the overall #1 seed, North Carolina. So it should be a battle and it will be a lot of fun to watch.