Update: South of the Equator

It's five rounds into the home-and-away season for the AFL, and the North Melbourne Kangaroos are the sole remaining undefeated team on the ladder. Friday night (4 am Friday morning, Idaho time), they have to face the second place Western Bulldogs, on their mutual home grounds at Etihad Stadium (the only covered, artificial turf stadium in the league), where the Doggies can run like mad and usually race past their opponents (my wager is that there's going to be zero loss-less teams in three days). Should be as great a game as last Friday night's classic, where Hawthorn won their third straight three-point victory, 112-109 over the Adelaide Crows in a thriller.

Right now, it looks like there are seven teams who are (barring disaster) going to be the definitive favorites to make the eight-team finals: the four named above, plus the Sydney Swans, West Coast Eagles, and the Geelong Cats. The eighth spot, were I a betting man, will come down to a race between the two newest clubs, the Gold Coast Suns and the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Giants, neither of whom have ever made finals. (And GWS looks much more likely, with the injuries Gold Coast is piling up again after last year's injury debacle!) That would be an AMAZING finals month of September! The tenth possibility, surprisingly, is Melbourne's Demons, who haven't sniffed playoffs in a decade, but are 3-2 and looking strong - not as strong as the above teams, but...you know, it's possible. Their rating gain of 12.6 ELO points is second in the competition, behind only GWS's ridiculous 23.4.

On the other end of the scale, in a phenomenal turn, the only winless team in the AFL is last year's top seeded team, the Fremantle Dockers, with essentially the same personnel. Now, they're starting to rack up some ailing players as well, but that's not the excuse for losing five straight, including a four point loss Sunday to the other (previously) winless team, the Carlton Blues, who were expected to be poor this year in a rebuilding effort. The five teams who have fallen on hard times this season are Fremantle (0-5), Essendon (1-4 - expected, having lost 12 top players in the WADA drug ruling), Collingwood (2-3, with wins over Essendon this weekend and a lucky win by 2 over a weak team), Richmond (1-4) and Port Adelaide (2-3), two teams expected to play finals but who play each other this weekend to see which one's falling faster...

Why?

If you're Johnny Manziel, and you're trying to get a job in the NFL, and the word on the street is you can't get your head out of your tail long enough to actually work at your job, why are you hanging out with someone like Josh Gordon, who just got picked up AGAIN for drugs and cannot ever APPEAL for reinstatement into the league for the rest of the year?

And why, if you're Von Miller, do you even consider letting Manziel room with you at this point?

And why do I care at this point? Is it the car crash theory - like Lindsay Lohan or Kim Kardashian or Mike Tyson, you just can't look away at some point of ludicrosity (a word I just made up)? When he gets a JOB, then I can justify it...

Aussie Rules update

Hello from down under! As we get ready to tip Week 4 of the AFL footy season, here's where the teams stand after three games:

3 and 0) Scoreboard!... Gold Coast Suns (the big surprise, but then they've had an easy schedule so far), Sydney Swans (looked strong three weeks in a row - Luke Parker leads our Player of the Year voting, and Buddy Franklin is scoring like Steph Curry again!), and North Melbourne Kangaroos (first time they won game ONE, let alone the first three, in ten years! But they're strong enough to have earned those wins).

2 and 1) A series of teams who are either imperfect or ran into a bad week or a better team or... Hawthorn Hawks (no surprise - tough wins against West Coast and the Bulldogs earn them their cred back), West Coast Eagles and Western Bulldogs (been great and each lost a tough game to the Hawks), Geelong Cats (looked great all season; GWS bullied them in a bad week), Adelaide and Port Adelaide (the Cats are the better of the two, but Port's had two easy games besides getting whooped by their cross-town rivals).

1 and 2) Teams which have their teeth clenched right now... GWS Giants (an up and down team), Melbourne Demons (ditto - no bad losses), Collingwood Magpies and Richmond Tigers (weaker than expected), Essendon Bombers (upset the Dees somehow in week 2), and St. Kilda Saints (upended the Pies in Nick Riewoldt's 300th game!).

0 and 3) Exactly where they deserve to be, although all show signs of a pulse, at least...Brisbane Lions (don't expect more than a few wins), Carlton Blues (but number one draft pick Jacob Weitering is the real deal), and last year's minor premiers, the Fremantle Dockers (who don't seem to understand that you have to score more than five goals a game to win in this league. The walls may be caving in if they can't scare up a win soon...)

So, this week, some easy calls: West Coast over Richmond Friday; Geelong over Essendon, Hawthorn over St. Kilda, Gold Coast over Brisbane (but in a rivalry? Never know...), Western over Carlton, and on Sunday expect North Melbourne to add to Fremantle's misery. As for the question mark games, I'm thinking GWS gets over the line against Port Adelaide, I'll take the Adelaide Crows to upset Sydney, and by flipping a coin I've got Melbourne nipping Collingwood (they show more positive signs).

Right now, my record is 20-7; I'm sitting in the top 10% of tipsters in the AFL competition, and there's a long way to go...