On The Clock

Ever heard of these guys?:

Thomas Davis. Travis Johnson. David Pollack. Erasmus James. Alex Barron. Marcus Spears. Matt Jones. Mark Clayton.

Doesn't ring a bell? At least not on your average fall/winter Sunday?

That list would be picks No. 16-22 in the 2005 NFL draft.

Pick No. 23? That would be Fabian Washington, who went to the Oakland Raiders. Washington made five interceptions in three years with the Raiders and then played for the Ravens and Saints before missing all of the 2011 season with a hamstring injury.

Pick No. 24? That would be Aaron Rodgers. Think the quarterback-deprived Raiders wish they had taken Rodgers?

Tom Brady was the 199th player selected in the 2000 NFL draft. Of the 198 players selected ahead of him, six were quarterbacks. Ready for this list?:

Chad Pennington. Giovanni Carmazzi. Chris Redman. Tee Martin. Marc Bulger. Spergon Wynn.

Seriously. All of those guys were chosen ahead of Brady. Carmazzi and Redman were third-round picks, for that matter. Brady didn't go until Round 6.

The NFL draft amazes TigerBlog. It's like giving the weather report, except that there are millions of dollars at stake. And yet the teams are so consistently wrong in their evaluations.

Oh sure, sometimes they're right. Probably more so than they're horribly wrong. It's just that with all of the attention and money and time and film and workouts and everything else, can't someone figure out that, say, Victor Cruz is fast?

And the coverage of the draft? TB can't handle it.

Anyway, TB won't be watching the draft when it starts tonight. Hopefully the Giants will get some impact players, like they did when they picked Jacquian Williams with the 202nd pick last year. You remember Williams, right? He's the one who stripped the ball in overtime against the 49ers in the NFC championship game.

That's how you win, by the way.

Meanwhile, back at sporting events that TB really cares about, there's the two Game 7s in the NHL tonight involving local teams.

And then there's Princeton-Cornell.

The Tigers and Big Red have five huge games this weekend, four in baseball and one in men's lacrosse.

The baseball games are at Cornell tomorrow and then here Sunday.

In the Rolfe Division, Dartmouth as a four-game lead on Harvard with four games to play against the Crimson.

In the Gehrig Division, Princeton trails Cornell by three with the four games this weekend. What that means is that the Tigers have little margin for error.

Cornell is currently 13-3, followed by Princeton at 10-6. 

Should Princeton win three of four, then Cornell would still win the division title. Princeton needs to win all four, which would mean the division title and a spot opposite Dartmouth (in all probability) in the Ivy League Championship Series.

The site of the ILCS will be at the team that has the better league record. Dartmouth is now 11-5, so it's still fairly up in the air.

Hopefully, the Tigers can push it to Sunday here with the division still unsettled and then take their chances.

The baseball season in the Ivy League flies by. It's 20 league games in 30 days.

Hopefully Day 30 will still matter.