The Sports Monitor

Before the season begins, here's my quick take on the league: AFC NORTH Pittsburgh Baltimore Cleveland Cincinnati AFC EAST New England New York Miami Buffalo AFC SOUTH Houston Indianapolis Tennessee Jacksonville AFC WEST San Diego Kansas City Oakland Denver NFC NORTH Green Bay Detroit Chicago Minnesota NFC EAST Philly Dallas Washington New York NFC SOUTH Atlanta New Orleans Tampa Carolina NFC WEST St. Louis San Francisco Seattle Arizona (QUICK EDIT: Seattle should be in last place here instead of Arizona.) Playoffs: AFC Wild Card: Baltimore over Houston, Pittsburgh over New York. AFC Division: San Diego over Baltimore, New England over Pittsburgh AFC Championship: San Diego over New England NFC Wild Card: New Orleans over St. Louis, Atlanta over Tampa NFC Division: Philly over New Orleans, Green Bay over Atlanta NFC Championship: Green Bay over Philly Super Bowl: Green Bay over San Diego Quick thoughts: Yeah, I know, I ha

It seems Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis is unhappy about his team playing on back-to-back nights in the NHL playoffs. It is a shame that both teams will have to play back to back games ... because the Pittsburgh building - against NHL rules - booked a series of concerts and forced the league to alter the playoff schedule, Leonsis wrote on his blog. That's too bad, Ted. It really is. You'll soon be up there in the upper echelon of crybabies of in sports. It's unfortunate that three events over eight days at Mellon Arena forced the schedule change. One of those events happened to be a Yanni concert. Hey, that's the breaks. Mellon Arena needs as many events scheduled there as possible. And just a couple months ago it looked like the Pens could miss the playoffs. Now that they've evened the series, it looks as if things could turn in Game 5 tonight. Just remember, all that momentum of winning Games 3 and 4 goes out of the window when they drop the puck. If the Pe