SportsCenter Recap

The Good: SportsCenter floated the notion of Jermaine Dye as AL MVP. It's not a bad selection, and one we hadn't thought of a few weeks ago when discussing the award here. Dye is hitting .325 with 37 homers and 99 RBI, good for a 1.041 OPS. The White Sox remain (albeit barely) the wild card leaders, and in substantial part that's due to Dye's leadership. The big knock against him for being MVP is that this team also features Jim Thome and Paul Konerko in the heart of the order, so it's hard to say that "without Dye, this team wouldn't be here." In the end, I don't think Dye will win - but if the Sox hold off the Twins, it'll be hard for my personal selection, Joe Mauer, to be selected from outside the playofffs. The race should come down to Big Papi against Mauer or Dye, whichever is still playing in October.

The Bad: "The Ultimate Bowl Championship" or whatever they're calling the stupid "analysis" that they're doing on SportsCenter this week. If you've missed it, three of these guys discuss a fake tournament of the best college football teams, to try and figure out what would happen if college football had a tournament playoff system. It's a nice idea - in December, maybe. These teams haven't played a down yet, and in light of the major departures from USC and other top programs, there's no way to fairly or accurately assess whether Iowa can hold off Florida State's pass rush. What's worse about this segment is that they take far too long breaking these fake games down, and the really awful part is that they talk about these games as if they're imminent. I'm not sure that Mark May understands that Louisville isn't gearing up to take on the Trojans this weekend.

The Ugly: If you missed it, Sean Casey got thrown out at first base from left field yesterday. I'll say that again: Sean Casey got thrown out at first base from left field yesterday. He hit a liner between third and short that nicked off 3B Joe Crede's glove and rolled into the outfield. He apparently thought that Crede caught the ball, and stopped running and turned around. Oops. Props to LF Pablo Ozuna for never missing a beat in picking up the roller and firing it straight to first. Sean Casey - you're a veteran who should know much, much better than to not to run out a play. That may have played in Pittsburgh, but not in a pennant race.