SimonOnSports

Group A Germany - Captain Michael Ballack - Homesquad Germany has the young firepower to contend in this years World Cup but it will need the steadying force and leadership of Ballack to keep the squad balanced and focused. Ecuador - Captain Equator - I know one person from Ecuador, and she isn't on their national team. Poland - Maciej ?urawski - He plays for Celtic, that's a pretty good team give eit to Maciej. Costa Rica - Nobody - Wow I know pretty much nobody on any of these teams in this group. Hope these games aren't on tv much. Group B England - Stephen Gerrard - Midfielder and leader of the Liverpool winner of the 2005 Champions League, will now be thrust into a more attacking position with the injury and doubtful presence of Wayne Rooney. England will need Gerrard to be a goal scoring force if it is to win its first World Cup in Four Decades. Sweden - Henrik Larsson - Larsson was the spark plug that a sloppy Barca squad needed to jump out in front of Arsenal in t...

Moral Dilemna: When to root for/against your fantasy player? If life were simple then one could root for their favorite team and everyone on their fantasy roster all the time, unfortunately life is not that simple, and the joys of fantasy sports comes with a few pitfalls. Here are some instances where you might be put in an uncomfortable position: 1) Batter vs. Pitcher What happens when you're fantasy batter lines up against your fantasy pitcher? Do you root for the strikeout? Do you look at the scoreboard and say oh the pitcher has a big lead give up a solo home run? Is the best case scenario a single and then giving up a steal? Are you spending way too much time overthinking this? SimonSays: Typically root for the pitcher, as the batter has many more opportunities to succeed within a week than does a pitcher. So when Derrick Turnbow is on for a save and he's facing Brian Giles, root for Turnbow. Plus he has sweet hair. 2) Pitcher vs. Pitcher. Here's a painful sce...

It’s the Stanley Cup finals and this is the first time I’ve deemed it necessary to discuss Hockey. Only because I want to see if I’m right when I put together a prediction and this helps me not forget. Things I Know about the Oilers They are an 8th seed. This doesn’t happen in the NBA, 8 seeds nowadays suck, so good for the NHL that they were a big surprise. The Oilers were among the many to fleece the Bruins front office with trades grabbing Samsanov from the GM. Too bad hockey doesn’t get a ton of press else the GMs for the Bruins would take away some heat from Isiah Thomas. The Oilers in order to get away from the attention in Edmonton, spent last week practicing in New York. Yes, to avoid distraction they went to NYC. Just shows you how big hockey is in New York after the Rangers get bounced. Things I know about the Hurricanes Way cooler when they were the Whalers. Way cooler. Rod Brind’Amour wins a lot of face offs, so says my fantasy hockey team. The Hurricanes were a high seed a...

Heat vs. Pistons Wow, I got this one completely right Heat in 6. The Pistons just showed too many weaknesses when playing the Cavs, a one man team, for me to think that they were going to take out the Heat. First off the Heat have the 2 best players on the court in Shaq and D-Wade both of whom the Pistons could not guard, in addition they have a hall of fame and perennial winner in GP coming off the bench. In the end the Pistons could not score, Rip didn’t shoot well at all until the final game of the series when it was too late, and truth be told it was the lone non all star on the Pistons, Prince, who was the best player on the court for the whole series for the Pistons and it just wasn’t good enough. The Heat simply stated is the better team, and Shaq still has a few miles left in the tank. It still begs the question of whether or not Larry would have gotten the Pistons through this round possibly because Flip got nothing out of Rasheed this series, but we will never know. Mavs vs. ...

More Clue Game Rebus fun, this ones an easy one.

In breaking news the star of this recent sportscenter commercial , in which he famously states "I'll suggest it." was dealt in a record transfer of 30 million british pounds or for the uninformed American, 56 million dollars. He transferred from the Italian powerhouse AC Milan to the English powerhouse Chelsea FC. Real Madrid now has competetion from Chelsea as the "New York Yankees" of football. In the past month Chelsea has signed the captains of two respective World Cup teams. Shevchenko the captain of the Ukranian team, as well as Michael Ballack the captain of the host German team. Soon enough Chelsea full roster will include players who are strictly national team stars, they are fastly approaching this as it is. Now if you were the 11th richest man on the planet how would you spend your money. I know what I would do, I would buy a sports franchise maybe more than one, and throw a ton of money at it to make sure they succeeded every year. This is why ...

ESPN is by far my favorite sports website. I do check out SI, Sportsline and a few others, but usually ESPN hits the spot. Today there was a hidden gem of an article providing unintentional comedic quotes throughout. The article is about Coby Karl, son of Nuggets basketball coach George Karl, and how he is testing out the NBA draft waters which included a workout for his fathers Nuggets. The story is a solid heartwarmer with Coby recently going through cancer treatment and attempting to take advantage of his possible opportunities to enter the world of professional basketball. And of course its always a story when a celebrated coach's son is on his way to his fathers world. But what made this article stand out as not just a heartwarmer were the overly humurous statements made by son and by father. "He knows me probably better than anyone so that would be an advantage, but that's in a dream world." Coby I love the bluntly obvious statements. But throwing in t...