Favre's Done, the 'Dream Team' Is Toast

A fairly manageable schedule will help Favre put up some wins this year, but I suspect he'll be a shell of his former Packers self.

Angels over Cubs in the World Series.

Picking the team in each league with the best record to go to the World Series couldn't be any more cliché, but I honestly don't see any other way right now it could shape up.

The Angels have baseball's best record -- with good reason. Their starting pitching has been lights out and they feature one of the most reliable and dominant closers in the game with Francisco Rodriguez. The only glaring weakness they had was the lack of a big-time power bat, and getting Mark Teixiera more than filled that void.

As for the Cubs, they make it by virtue of no other real competition. The Brewers are in the wild-card hunt, but remain five games back from Chicago and lack the consistency of a World Series team. The NL East and West are in general disarray and even the leaders of those divisions have too many glaring problems right now.

Chicago will ride reliable starting pitching and the bat of Alfonso Soriano into the Series, where they'll hit the buzz saw that is the Angels' pitching staff.

Problems are just beginning for the NBA.

Anyone who thinks the sentencing of disgraced referee Tim Donaghy for his part in a gambling scandal is the end of troubles for the NBA may be sadly mistaken. Firstly, if Team USA fails to win gold in Beijing it could do some serious damage to the "superstar" status of some of the players, who would have once again failed to live up to the Dream Team expectations set by their timeless predecessors. As if that's not enough, now the league finds itself facing a new trend of top players heading overseas to play in European leagues.

Recently Josh Childress left the Atlanta Hawks and signed a contract to play next season in Greece. Now there's talk of the same action from other players as well. Last week Lebron James said he would play in Europe for $50 million per year. While that salary is ridiculous and almost certainly out of reach, there are rumors that some teams have already contacted him.

With the NBA image in the tubes for years now, gambling scandals and rumors of players defecting to go overseas are the last thing Commissioner David Stern would like to see, but like it or not we may have only witnessed the tip of the iceberg so far.