The Colorado Rockies will face the San Diego Padres in a one game playoff to determine which of the two teams will be the NL Wild Card winner. Newman gets the first post on the Rockies board. This active forum got to experience one of the longer winning streaks of the season late in the year. Many have postulated that the Rockies are a team of destiny, having faced playoff pressure for a full week.

Monday night the “team of destiny” will face likely Cy Young Winner Jake Peavy.

Other playoff match-ups are
American League
LAAA @ Boston
NYY @ Cleveland

National League
Cubs @ Arizona
Winner @ Philly

Your predictions?

Montreal Expos fans used to be the bread and butter of FanHome.com’s baseball community. Witness just a small example of their involvement via the Wayback Machine and you see a community that was anything but the stereotyped apathetic Expos fan that the US media played them for.

So my question is this — where have all those fans gone? Are there many (or any) fan sites or tribute pages still operating on the web (besides our own Montreal Expos forum)? And while we’re at it, are there any Montreal fans that would embrace another baseball team in the city?

DiamondDave takes a look at the NFL ranking every team in the league. Three weeks in his top five teams are all 3-0 and the bottom 5 are all 0-3.

Top Five

1-Patriots
2-Colts
3-Cowboys
4-Steelers
5-Packers

Bottom Five

28-Saints
29-Rams
30-Dolphins
31-Bills
32-Falcons

Don’t see your team? Want to comment on where they do belong?
Full Rankings Here

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When it comes to league plans, balance of power and self-exposure, is there too much of a fixation on the teams in the Northeast United States? While the evidence is there, the justifications are readily there too. Some of the older franchises in the country are spread between Boston and the Ohio valley. New York is the media capital of the US (if not the world) and the American population is still very much centered there as well…

What are your thoughts on this?

Poster LouGehrig speculates that the Red Sox are in danger of collapsing as they are prone to in history. Now with only a 2.5 game lead, how would one expect a Beantown fan react? How ’bout calling for the team to just win enough to get to the playoffs and then forfeit the rest of their games.

Boston doesn’t deserve to win the division. The team obviously doesn’t care about exorcising old demons and delivering a division title to its fans for the first time in 12 years. Otherwise the club would take these September games a lot more seriously, and actually make an effort to win them.

It is amazing how ready to be disappointed the Sox fans are, but I don’t think Zen is the only one, just the most vocal. Will the Red Sox hang onto the division or wind up settling for the Wild Card spot?

So, my home town nine have been the worst contending team down the stretch in the history of the game. Once just a handful of games back from the AL West title, they managed to get swept by the LAAAngels and later went on a road trip to Toronto, NYYankees and Detroit that basically ended their chances. From Aug 25th on the Mariners have gone 6-17, and so like many other Fanhome communities (Atl and Col come to mind quickly) I have started to look towards next year. This is a big budget team with market conditions that give them the ability to spend quit a bit, but just how much is available? Thanks to Cot’s website I can glean the guaranteed money, options and arbitration eligible players and set up a nice simple table for our viewing. All numbers are in Millions of Dollars and represent Real Dollar Value or best estimate there-of, so there may be some discrepancies when comparing to data that uses only CBA Luxury Tax Valuation.

Now the Mariners have several players in their pre-arbitration that will certainly be on the club which raises that number a bit, but overall it looks like this somewhat weak Free Agent class the Mariners will have a couple dozen million to spend this coming offseason.

What should the Mariners do with this cash?
See the thread

One of baseball’s most tenured General Managers is calling it quits. Terry Ryan will resign as the Minnesota Twins general manager and even though this may reign “So what?” remarks from several fans out in Baseball land, this move should actually resonate all around the league.

Ryan has made something out of nothing more times than not with the Twins. I can’t quite say that he’s been playing Moneyball like Billy Beane in Oakland but the economic situation is comparable. Minnesota loves baseball but Carl Pohlad loves money… Which has kept the Twins with tight purse strings for years… And what has been the result? A competitive (though non-championship) team more times than not. Who will take Ryan’s place? Where do the Twins go from here and is Terry Ryan going to find himself to be a sought-after commodity any time soon? Let us know your thoughts on this…

We’re testing a new feature (or actually several new features) here at FanHome on our front page right now. We’re long overdue to fix a problem with link titles (that’s done) and plan to try out other options for the sake of doing so…

But right now we’ve put up (and are testing - so knock yourselves out with choices) a poll on the front page of the site. In this case it’s simply an opinion poll on FanHome itself so it’s no big deal. The poll (as it stands right now) is on the top right of the FanHome front page sidebar. Oh, and just for the lazy who want to participate in our first every front-page poll, we’ll also put it in this post for your amusement.

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There’s more trouble in the NFL, and this time it is game related. The closest thing the league has to a dynasty has been caught cheating, but taping the opponents sideline. NadoBrave posts in the NFL forum, but where the damage is really apparent is when a Patriots fan responds on their team boardit isn’t in defense.

Personally I’m really bummed this story was confirmed, and the fact that the Pats have been accused of this before is a little unsettling. They were accused of doing this in Green Bay last year.

Later Drury makes it clear she doesn’t want games forfeited and will accept a penalty as a fan, which I guess is good, because the league is considering now how many draft picks the Patriots dynasty will lose. Will this be their downfall?

In the thread on the Patriots first game of the 2007 season Zen653 sounds off with his take on the Tom Brady led New England gridiron squad.

Decisive victory by the Patriots here in Week 1. That was an impressive thrashing of Eric Mangini’s vaunted New York Jets. The offensive line gave Brady plenty of time to throw the ball and he delivered some beautiful passes, connecting with Randy Moss for 50+ yards on one occasion. Remember when critics used to say that he couldn’t throw the long ball? He’s just never had anyone like Moss to reel it in.

It was also great to see Junior Seau and Adalius Thomas (does that guy cover a lot of ground, or what?) so active on defense and Ellis Hobbs running an NFL-record 108 yards on the kick return. That’s a very auspicious beginning to the young season and it came against a quality opponent. The only guy who looked a little shaky to me was Dante Stallworth who dropped a few short passes. He reminded me a bit of Caldwell in that regard. I also didn’t like the botched field goal attempt towards the end of the first half.

Still, all in all, a strong showing by the Patriots. I’m confident this team has what it takes to win a lot of games. We’ll know more next week after the game against San Diego.

Follow the Patriots in their forum all year long