Charles Dickens clearly had the 2018 Yankees in mind when he wrote his classic many years ago.  No doubt Aaron Boone who had his opening spring training press conference yesterday would agree.  It will be all downhill from here on out.  In February, you can be a potential genius new manager with no experience.  Most everyone is healthy, there are no personality issues with players or between players and perhaps even Dellen Betances (slimmed down to 265 pounds from 280 last year) can find the plate now.

Last year’s team was one game from making the World Series and anything short of playing in the World Series will be considered a failure in 2018.  That means a lot more pressure on the youngsters.  If Aaron Judge does 2 months again striking out almost every at bat, that will be a lot worse than it was in 2017.  There are still unknowns at 2nd and 3rd base where rookies will be competing for the starting jobs.  SU is looking for both Torres and Andujar to get a shot and hopes they can avoid injury to win the jobs.  Also looking for a big year from SU fave Greg Bird.  And Jacoby Ellsbury is still here and is clearly untradeable.  But SU says you know someone will get injured and he will be thrown into the mix to hit .269 with no power and no rbis.  It’s a living at $23 million a year.

The good news is that baseball is here.  The Mets also unveiled their new manager and if their pitching can stay healthy – a big if – they are contenders in the NL.  Goose Gossage has been banned from the Yankee camp.  Let’s face it: he’s an idiot.  Bad mouths everyone, hates everyone and he shouldn’t be there.  SU would keep him away from the Old Timers Day game as well.

Did you see the story about former Yankee pitcher Esteban Loaiza?  Busted with 43 pounds of cocaine.  Dude made $43 million in his career.  How does that happen?

Hope springs eternal.  SU is ready.  The Knicks are playing for draft positioning, Jeremy Lin is out another year and the NBA won’t get interesting until May and June.  Bring it on.

The Yankees broke from the Chase Headley strategy of signing “gritty veterans” to supplement the roster of young, exciting players with high upside.  Instead of bringing back Todd Frazier, they held firm and allowed him to move to Queens to join the Mets at Citifield.

The Mets will be getting a great guy in the clubhouse who loves playing baseball.  He will be a leader on the field, hit .217, with 32 home runs and 71 rbis.  Of course, you also get the 179 strikeouts and Met fans will get to the point where just putting the ball in play will feel like a successful at bat – especially with a man on 3rd base and less than 2 outs.  As long-time SU subscriber D. Harmon said, pairing Frazier with former Red teammate Jay Bruce adds a lot of strikeouts to the line up and is not a good strategy.  Now in this day and age, maybe that is the strategy.  You no longer worry about putting the ball in play.  Rather, nothing wrong with strike outs as long as you get the occasional home run thrown into the mix.  The Yankees are actually set up that way as well with Judge, Sanchez and Stanton.

SU prefers seeing the ball put into play and moving runners along with speed.  The Yankees went in a different direction and time will tell on that front.  Aaron Boone will be on the hot seat if they get off to a slow start – say 2-4 (just kidding, the media and Yankee fans will allow him 9 games to get comfortable).  The expectations will be very high this year – a totally different feel from last season.

Tough injury last night for KP on the Knicks.  But that was an injury that was bound to happen as he is often in the air given his style of play.  A torn ACL takes 10 months to rehab and this will likely cost them next year as well.  The good news is that they can now move some players off the roster before the trade deadline and give Trey Burke more minutes to see what they have there.

Finally, SU provides this public service announcement to men riding on Metro-North trains in the middle seat.  When you slide in there, do not put your computer bag on your lap – that widens your area and you end up infringing on the space of your neighbor.  And please, don’t feel the need to send 87 texts from the train where your elbow is flapping wildly into the side of your neighbor.  It just doesn’t feel good for 38 minutes of train time.  Women riders may ignore this public service advice – they keep to their personal space.  But men, get with the program. You know who you are – knock it off.

We now return you to your original programming.

Who wouldda thunk it?  We got an action-packed, high powered offensive Super Bowl in Minneapolis  that featured over 1,100 yards of offense and maybe 2 punts.  There were 4th down attempts near mid-field, passes to the quarterback by both teams and a game that came down to the final play.  Who invited these two Big – 12 Conference teams to play?  For SU, this much more preferable than a 13-10 slugfest with 7 punts in the 1st quarter where the coaches are playing field position with their defenses.  I just can’t watch that style of football anymore.  The reality is that if player safety matters, this may be the future of the NFL – less hard hitting and more up and down the field.

It was a great game – close throughout and you felt it would come down to whoever had the ball at the end of the game.  The refs got the two calls right on the touchdowns that were closely reviewed even though SU says that in the regular season both calls get overturned.  It’s time to change the rule on the ball moving in the receiver’s hands.  There is no way the refs on the field can see that in fast motion and let’s allow them to focus on whether they get the feet in-bounds.  Replay is fine but not for overkill purposes.  SU does note that the head referee, Gene Steratore, is the same ref who changed a possession call with 8 seconds left when Michigan played Purdue that was ridiculous.  Apparently, he has learned from his mistakes.

Chris Collinsworth is taking a beating on Twitter today by questioning both calls.  SU still likes him as an announcer but the Philly fans are not happy.  SU is wondering why Malcom Butler did not play on defense for the Pats after starting all year.  They were torched all night long.  Odd move by Belichick but of course he has been right much more than wrong in his career.

Tom Brady is the only QB in all of NFL history to throw for over 500 yards, 3 touchdowns or more and no picks to lose a game.  Crazy.

So, about those predicted scores.  Let’s review who weighed in:

• SU: Eagles 31 – 24
• PBok: Eagles 31 – 30
• Mark N: Pats 24 – 17
• Steve: Pats 27 – 24
• David Ball: Eagles 30 – 28
• David Stockel: Pats 27 – 23
• Robert A. Rifkin: Pats 27 – 23
• Tom: Pats 34 – 20

Hmmmm.  Final score was Eagles 41 – 33 – an 8-point differential.  Who was closest?  Wait for it…….. Ah, SU!  I guess I get to keep the SU travel bag and windbreaker for another year.

Do the Eagles have a QB competition next season?  Will Nick Foles be in high demand when he becomes a free agent in a year?  Or is he only good in Philadelphia?  Do the fans that abandoned the NFL over player kneeling come back now after an exciting Super Bowl?  SU suspects that if the President stops talking about it, this will go away.  SU also suspects that ain’t going to happen.  And so it goes.

Super Bowl comments?  Did the Pats get robbed on the TD calls?

SU’s crack research team  has been running thousands of simulated game scenarios for this weekend’s Super Bowl.  So far, the Patriots are coming out on top 54.3% of the time while the Eagles win 45.6% of the games.  Donald Trump won 0.1% of the time but SU believes some Russian bots may have infiltrated the system so we will just call this outcome illegitimate.

SU is on the record predicting an Eagles 31 – 24 victory in an upset.  As is tradition at SU, we ask the subscribers to weigh in with their game predictions.  The person who comes closest to the actual outcome will receive props from SU and of course, the complimentary SU windbreaker and travel bag.  And a special shout out to long-time SU subscribers J. Winston and R. Winston who will be heading to Minneapolis for the game to root on their Iggles.

This is your chance to shine.  Let’s see what you’ve got.

Many of you are no doubt following what is going on at Michigan State as a result of the Larry Nassar scandal with USA Gymnastics.  The school President and Athletic Director have now both resigned but it looks like they may have company very soon.  Long-time SU subscriber, T. Potter, just alerted SU to this article:

http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/22214566/pattern-denial-inaction-information-suppression-michigan-state-goes-larry-nassar-case-espn

Marc Dantonio has had a nice long run at Michigan State but remember, Jim Tressel was like a god at Ohio State and even he was not immune to some scandal.  And this is a whole lot worse than that.  Might Tom Izzo even get caught up in this?

The fans are starting to pepper SU for a Super Bowl prediction.  I have never been a fan of making score predictions but will take one for the team due to popular demand.  A few considerations:

• Clearly the Pats have been there before.  Experience matters and being able to handle the hype of Super Bowl week is a factor.  Tom Brady knows how to make the adjustments and can thrive even in a year with a depleted receiver corps.
• This may be the Pats’ last hurrah.  Several coaching coordinators will be leaving and the amount of noise going around regarding Kraft, Belichick and Brady has been constant.
• Nick Foles can play at a high level but no guarantee he will in this game.  The Eagles were smart to get him going last game with a series of quick slants that got him in rhythm.  You know the Patriots will take that away in this game.
• The game is indoors which should favor Brady.

SU will go with the Eagles.  It’s time for change and just maybe the karma is with Philadelphia.  Feels like it will be high scoring.  SU says 31 – 24 Eagles.

Feel free to make your predictions.  As always, SU will heap major praise on whomever is closest to the actual outcome and score.

Other thoughts for today:

• Trey Burke with a double-double last night in limited minutes (18 points and 11 assists).  SU says just start him for the remainder of the season.  Nothing to lose – team is going nowhere and if you continue to roll Jack out there and keep losing why not make the change?  Ridiculous not to; Burke can provide a spark.  Maybe you catch lightning?
• Federer in yet another Grand Slam final.  But the men keep dropping due to injury – Nadal went down in the quarter finals with a hip injury.  This is a big deal for the men’s game.  Is it the absence of an off season?  Hard courts?  Long rallies where no one comes to net?  Djokovic will surely need arm surgery – he is kidding himself that rest will cure it.  Murray is out until June.  But also a great opportunity for the next Gen guys to show themselves.  The kid from South Korea, Chung, looks really good.
• Watch out for Purdue in the NCAAs.  Michigan State gets all the attention but Purdue has a bunch of seniors and size.  SU says they may be there in the end.
• We need pitchers and catchers to report now.  Pretty incredible how many free agents are still out there.  The owners are collectively looking to get under the revenue sharing cap and there have been few signings.  SU is still terrified that the Yankees will bring back Todd Frazier.
• Barry Bonds and Clemens still only at 56-57% of Hall of Fame ballots.  They only have 4 years left.  SU would be fine keeping them out but suspects they both sneak in at the last minute.  Do they belong?

Finally, after much prodding from SU, the Knicks have signed Trey Burke to an NBA contract and send Ramon Sessions on his way.  SU is not positive but it almost seems like they waited this long to minimize the payment of Sessions’ remaining salary for this year.  The other theory out there is that the Knicks were looking to sign a player from Norway in order to tap into the international market as they have the best people and players but could not find a suitable point guard.

So, the question for Coach Jeff Hornaeck now is do you replace Sessions with Burke as the 12th player on the team and never play him?  Or do you do something bold?  Do you look to spread the court with another shooter?  The Westchester Knicks allegedly play the same offense as the parent team so the transition should be easy.  The bad news is that they have guaranteed Jarrett Jack’s contract for the rest of the season.  The return of Hardaway helps a lot but SU says if you watch Porzingis, he is much better getting the ball in the flow of the offense vs. having to work hard in an isolation setting to get his shot.  Surely, they have stats on where he is more effective but it certainly looks that way to me.  Some say Ntilikina has hit the rookie wall and may need some down time.  SU would put Jack on the bench but that will never happen.  Anyway, let’s see starting today.

Gerrit Cole has been traded to the Astros so the Yankees did not get that 5th starter as of yet.  SU is still fine going into this season with the current roster and giving the rookies a chance to shine.  This is what made last year’s team so much fun to watch.  However, Todd Frazier is still out there which scares me.  The Mets made a smart signing with Jay Bruce (3 years for $39 million is very fair) and are supposedly looking at Adrian Hernandez.  He likely has something left in the tank for a couple of years.  We are only about a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting.

Nice win for Michigan over Michigan State on the road yesterday.  They overcame Tom Izzo’s working the refs and won in a tough gym.  SU asks how much is working the refs really a factor?  It was interesting to see yesterday how many times the refs came over to chat with him throughout the game.  It was almost like they had to justify every call to him.  The game had a ridiculous number of foul shots and took about 2 hours and 40 minutes.  Michigan was in the penalty after 5 minutes in the first half – this from a team that is at the top of the list for fewest foul calls.  Michigan State pounds the ball inside and initiates contact.  SU says just let them play and stop with the touch fouls.  Maybe in the future they can put sensors on uniforms and use AI to make calls?  Don’t laugh – the technology is probably pretty close and they could use the G-League to test it out.

The Patriots in another AFC Championship game.  It’s an impressive run and it’s more than Tom Brady.  Say what you will about the Patriots, they run a great organization with that type of track record in a league with a salary cap.

Let’s be clear: SU is a seasoned fan.  I do not blame referees for losses as games are won and lost much earlier than the last play of the game.  We all know that although in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to just focus on that last play.  This is the case in every sport.  But having watched many Big Ten football and basketball games over the past 10+ years, it’s very clear that for a major college conference, the quality of officiating is truly terrible and consistently bad.  It was actually shocking to learn that the NCAA championship game Monday night had Big Ten officials.  I mean did all of the other conference officials have the day off?  What were they thinking?

Last night, Michigan and Purdue played a spirited game.  Purdue led until just a few minutes were left when Michigan finally took a small lead.  The game was tied when Charles Matthews of Michigan drove to the basket.  He was stripped on the baseline and the ball went out of bounds with 6.5 seconds left.  Time out by Michigan.  The Purdue coach asked the officials to review the play just for the hell of it as he said afterwards.  After a 5-minute review delay, they awarded the ball to Purdue.  The announcers saw nothing for the first 3-4 minutes of the delay but in order to fill the time started a process to review it frame by frame – like the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination.  You still couldn’t see anything but as a fan, you knew they would overturn after a while.  It was a clean strip that happens many times in a game at any level of basketball.  Purdue ball and then a touch foul on a pass into the low post that was probably a foul.  Guy makes 1 of 2 foul shots and that’s the game.

SU’s point: let the players decide the game at the end.  Review is only for plays that are clearly hard to tell.  You can look at any strip of the ball with today’s technology and determine that in some freeze frame a finger might have hit the ball.  If that’s the case, then officials should review every strip on every strip play.  The delay broke the flow of the game and what had been a terrific ending.  I don’t know if Michigan would have won but to have the game determined by the refs on a reversal there was a joke.  Ironically, the referee who made the reversal also refs NFL games – Gene Steratore.  He must have had his NFL cap on was looking to see if the ball moved in the receiver’s hands as he completed the catch….

That’s the rant for the morning.  All SU asks is that the referees consider the flow of the game and what they are reviewing.  This was overkill.  Make the change now.

Great NCAA championship game last night.  Of course, SU could not stay awake for the whole game but did wake up in the 4th quarter to see the missed field goal and then overtime.  Georgia was certainly dominant in the 1st half and the 13-0 half-time lead reflected that dominance.  You have to give Nick Saban credit for putting his freshman QB in for the 2nd half and allowing him to open up the offense.  They should have an interesting competition next season for the starting quarterback position – similar to what Ohio State went through with Cardale Jones and JT Barrett after they won the championship a few years ago.  As Georgia played an overtime game to get here, you can’t feel sorry for them – you roll the dice in OT.  The reality is that if Alabama had a better field goal kicker, Georgia would have lost in regulation.

The Georgia running back, Michel, had one run in the first half where he tip-toed down the sideline and stayed in-bounds.  You can see this guy will be special in the NFL – until he is injured after a couple of years of course.  Their quarterback, Fromm, is also the real deal and will have a great NFL career.  He has an athlete’s pedigree having also played in the Little League World Series and is a bit of a gun slinger.

In any event, a great conclusion to the season and you have to say that the NCAA Football Championship committee got it right with the 4 teams selected for the top bowls.

Trey Burke to the Knicks?  Sounds like we are no the verge.  Now it will be up to Jeff Hornacek to use him vs. having him be the 12th player on the roster who just sits.  The Knicks are last in the NBA in 3-point shooting.  He will need to figure out a way to use him to open things up for KP and others.  Or not.  Most G-League players who make the NBA rosters just sit.  The Knicks have guaranteed Jarrett Jack’s contract now for the season.  But there are always injuries and guys have to take advantage of their opportunities.

For those of you who follow men’s tennis, the number of injuries hitting the top players is striking.  Andy Murray just had hip surgery and is out until Wimbledon, Djokovic has a tennis elbow type of condition and may also need surgery very soon.  Stan Wawrinka has still not played for a few months and Nadal seems to be day-to-day with his knees.  SU says the issue is that this group of players tries to win by staying back and grinding out long rallies from the baseline.  This results in 4- and 5-hour matches in the major tournaments on hard courts and we are seeing them wear down physically.  Federer is the exception as he will venture to net or look to end points sooner with riskier shots.  I think the reality of the sport is that the grind it out approach will shorten careers or at least careers where you are at the top of the sport.  It will be interesting to see if Murray and Djokovic change their playing styles now or if they will see the answer as just playing fewer tournaments.  Young and up and coming players should pay attention here and model their games after Federer vs. this style.  The problem is that with the equipment these days, it’s hard to come to net and not get passed.

SU believes 2018 should be the year that refereeing, umpiring and officiating take their game to the next level.  It’s time.  Cases in point:

• If you watched yesterday’s Titans – Chiefs game, there were several instances of replays which were used to overturn fumble calls that were obviously wrong as well as a spotting of the ball that was a good 3 yards off.  And the NFL supposedly uses its top refs for the playoffs.  Not in this game.
• SU watched the Michigan – Illinois game yesterday.  Illinois has a new coach who has his team playing fierce, man-to-man, defense all over the court.  This means grabbing, holding and not allowing teams to run their offense.  It’s an interesting strategy.  Rye High School has employed this approach for years as SU’s subscribers who are familiar with Blind Brook High School hoops can attest to.  The refs can literally call a foul on every possession but rather than do that and slow the game down, they allow it all with no calls.  In this game, they actually did the opposite and started calling touch fouls on Michigan.  The game had no rhythm or flow.  SU says if it’s a foul, then you call it and you call it right from the start.  They will stop at some point playing defense that way.  But once you allow it, then that’s the way the game will be played.  Big Ten refs are challenged to begin with in any sport.  They need to get this right.
• SU says the fault is not all on the refs.  LeBron, for all his greatness, is the biggest whiner on foul calls in the NBA.  He complains on every call and stays down at the other end to make his point.  In the NFL, receivers literally on any incomplete pass make the hand motion for a penalty.  Some are legit, but many are not.  Every play.
• In the NBA, no player ever commits a foul.  They protest, flail their arms but when you watch on replay, they obviously did.

What you have today is players and coaches whining on every play.  SU suggests the following:

• Let’s start penalizing coaches and players more quickly for complaining on calls – especially in the NFL where nothing ever happens.  I am not saying disqualifying stars through technicals but maybe allow 3 technicals for ejection and make each tech 2 foul shots.  Just nip it in the bud.  At the highs school level, there is zero tolerance for this crap.  Apply it at the pro level.
• Get the replay process moving much faster.  There are obvious overturns that take 5-6 minutes.  Just do it.
• The NFL should simplify the catch rule.  If it looks like a catch, it’s a catch.  Move on.
• The call on the field shouldn’t matter in the NFL or in college.  Use the replay to get it right.  Things happen way to quickly on the field and replay today is so precise.  Just use the technology with the goal of making the right call.  Period.

SU has always believed that good teams overcome officiating.  Stop complaining and just play through it.  Of course, you will lose some games in the end but be professional and just play.  I know I am old school.   The games are fast moving and it’s hard to see everything.  Too many players today complain about not being respected by refs who won’t talk to them.  Enough of that.  Just play through it.

Thoughts?