Championship weekend

I apologize for not writing last week. I was on vacation in Utah and had no time to write my weekly post. So here is what I have for the past two weeks. I will mainly be focusing on college football first, but also will dive heavily into the baseball realm.

Here we go. College football championship time. The official bowl schedule along with (and especially) the college football playoff will be released this Sunday at 12:30 ET on ESPN. Tonight (Friday the fifth) we have witnessed one of those teams in action most likely stamp their ticket into the playoff. Oregon defeated Arizona 51-13 in Santa Clara, California in the PAC-12 championship game. A quite one-sided affair never left any doubt who was the better team. Here we have the remaining big-game schedule this weekend:
SEC Championship: 1 Alabama vs 16 Missouri 4 ET CBS
ACC Championship: 4 Florida State vs 11 Georgia Tech 8 ET ABC
BIG 10 Championship: 13 Wisconsin vs. 5 Ohio State 8:17 ET FOX
9 K-State at 6 Baylor 7:45 ET ESPN
Those are just some of the exciting games on hand tomorrow afternoon. Please take some time to watch some of them. It will be exciting to see how this all shakes out by Sunday.

 In terms of the baseball world, all eyes will be across the train tracks from Petco Park at the San Diego convention center where the baseball winter meetings will be held. It is expected (at least in the Padres community) that a big deal will be made by the end of the week by current GM A.J. Preller. He has made some news this past week since he signed veteran infielder Clint Barmes. He has played with the Pittsburgh Pirates for the past three years and before that he was with the Rockies and Astros. He was the one that drove in the game-winning RBI off of Trevor Hoffman in game 163 on October 1, 2007 -- the last day I shed tears of sorrow. He should bring some needed leadership into a young clubhouse. Preller also signed Mark Kotsay as the news hitting coach for the Padres. Lots of people like what they see with this veteran, who played with the Padres in 2013 before retiring and being hired into the front office. I like the hire. Phil Plantier, apparently, was the one that demanded results out of the hitters. Kotsay is the one that is a little laid back but also very supportive: the right tools for the job. He will continue to work alongside Alonzo Powell as his assistant. Last week, meanwhile, Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox and Yasmany Tomas with the D-Backs. Preller was aggressively Both of these free agents. pursuing these two free agents, offering Sandoval a higher contract than his 6-year, $95 million deal he got with the BoSox. My biggest disappointment was the Tomas deal. Now that he has signed with a rival team, he is guaranteed to hit .360 with like 7 home runs in Petco. Just kidding. It seems like the big hitters have great success at Petco, though.

In terms of the NFL, the Chargers are doing well as they pulled off a tough win in Baltimore last week. They will take on the Patriots this Sunday night on prime time TV.

In the NBA, LeBron and the Cavaliers have embarked on a 6-game win streak after beating the best team in the east tonight in the form of the Toronto Raptors. Does it look like this team is turning things around? We'll have to wait and see once the end of the calendar year approaches. Anyways, have a great week and check in next Friday night or weekend and I will have the bowl schedule posted!