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It’s been quite a few months to be a fan of baseball, basketball and football. Where do you begin?

Let’s begin with the much needed ‘coming clean’ of baseball. We’ve seen the shuck and jive from the likes of Palmero and now Clemens; the latter threw his friends, teammates and wife under the bus. Andy Pettite was surprisingly frank about his use of HGH. It’s quite amazing that absolute honesty is shocking – do we just expect our elite athletes to lie once caught?

While I disagree with Congress’ use of time on this particular subject, it is also unfortunately true that baseball will not clean itself up. But for Congress, the MLB would happily turn a blind eye to the rampant cheating going on in their sport, as long as the money keeps coming in, of course. Even with the pressure of Congress, first time offenders are suspended only fifteen days! Since baseball games aren’t played every day, players miss only a handful of games. And unless you’re a big star like Bonds, you’re likely going to go on with your life.

Cheating is wrong. Not only that, steroids and HGH are illegal. Why isn’t there a three strike rule for cheating? First time, half season. Second time, full season. Third time – banned from the league.

I wanted to get into baseball and after last season I was on the cusp; I’ll watch from the sidelines again.

Oh, and for the Phillies – you guys still suck. Pay Ryan Howard what he’s due already! He’s not T.O.! Pay the man! Very rarely do you get a player who is that good and is that humble and generally likable. He brings quite a bit of class to the organization, isn’t that reward enough?

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So, right after the Super Bowl, I told Lisa that this is going to put a huge amount of pressure on the Eagles. Not only the Giants beat the team in the Super Bowl that the Eagles failed to beat, the Giants are in the same division as the Eagles. Not only that, the Eagles are the only team in the division to not make the playoffs this year (the Cowboys, Redskins and Giants all made it in).

I didn’t see the Giants making the Super Bowl, let alone winning it. But no one could’ve imagined what kind of effect taking away two playmakers would have on the team. Losing Tiki Barber wasn’t a huge deal, the Giants were always stacked at running back. But I was certain that they would implode after losing Shockey. Turns out he’s a cancer, and once he left it became Manning’s team.

If I were the Giants, I’d trade Shockey. I wouldn’t mess with chemistry. And if anything, it’s been proven that you can win without him by beating the so-called best team in the penultimate game of the season. You can’t get better proof.

Back to the Eagles: the first shocking thing they did was franchise L.J. Smith, who thought all season he’d be playing for another team. By using the franchise tag, they now have to pay Smith the league average of the top five TEs – this is highly uncharacteristic of the Eagles, who almost never pay top dollar for any player.

And stranger still, the Eagles are in the running for CB Asante Samuel. He’s a prized free agent – which means the Eagles will need to pay top dollar for him too, if they want his services.

How this season played out is quite surprising, honestly. Because they played so shockingly well against the Patriots (and giving every team afterward a blueprint for beating the them), it appears to management at least that there’s enough gas in the tank for one more run. With the rumor and the franchising of LJ Smith, the Eagles may very well push very hard this offseason to win now, instead of later.

It can’t be stated enough that the Eagles performance this year was an embarrassment after dominating the NFC East for so long. The Giants beat all the other teams in the division, and went on to win the Super Bowl. That, by definition, makes the Eagles a doormat team. The Eagles have a new stadium, state of the art facilities and a rabid fanbase… and they lost to a team that plays in Jersey? Please.

But worse still, this affects the team’s overall value. A couple more seasons of losing and the Eagles will be the Arizona Cardinals of the NFC East… until the Cardinals moved out of the division, of course.

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Finally, the NBA. Holy crap.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the West has completely revamped itself. Shaq went to the Suns, Pau Gasol went to the Lakers, Ron Artest will probably head to the Nuggets, and Jason Kidd went to the Mavericks. The Spurs are still the Spurs, Houston is on a roll. Utah has lost only 2 games since trading for Kyle Korver (who knew he was that good?). And it goes on and on and on.

This is the season to end all seasons, honestly. The Celtics are undefeated against the West, Lebron James will likely go down as one of the best basketball players in the history of the NBA, and just for pure comedy, the Knicks still haven’t fired Isiah Thomas.

The NBA had a massive “NBA Cares” volunteer day on the 15th, where basketball players and NBA employees helped rebuild New Orleans at various sites. And the All Star game was pretty spectacular, too.

If the NBA can’t fix its image problems, in the wake of baseball’s and football’s scandals, there is no fixing it. The NBA is the most competitive sports league right now, bar none.

As for the Sixers, they have an outside shot of making the playoffs. The secret? Their young guys of Carney, Williams, Young with veterans Evans and Miller running the court at full speed. These guys make the Suns look slow. It’s been exciting to watch… but a bigger question mark looms. Who do you trade before the deadline, if at all (Feb. 21, 3pm)? Korver was a supposed untouchable under Billy King. Mike Bibby and Jason Kidd have been traded, is Andre Miler the next to go? Centers are in huge demand (as they always are) and Samuel Dalembert has been putting up some decent numbers – is there interest for him?

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The projects blog has been updated. We’ll try to do it on a weekly basis – it’s not just a place to brag, but Lisa and I do a lot of research so you don’t have to.

Related posts:

1. Thursday Grind
2. How Fitting
3. Football Season