Warriors Best Shot At Win?

New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez. AP photo

The Warriors head to Fort Collins after the bye week to take on Colorado State this Saturday. The Rams find themselves in a similar predicament in that they hired a successful coordinator, Jim McEwain from Alabama, have installed new systems and are struggling on the field (1-6). Both schools need their football programs to be successful and provide most of the revenue for their athletic departments.

For the Warriors, CSU may be the least of the remaining opponents. Hawaii will play next week on the road against pass-happy Fresno State, then come home to face Boise State before traveling to Colorado Springs to take on a triple-option team in Air Force, and returning home to play an improved UNLV team before closing out against South Alabama, which lost 30-10 to ranked Mississippi State in Starkville. This will be difficult and will leave some fans angry and many others hungry for a competitive team. A recent radio caller said we have to give the new staff five years to turn the program around.

I asked Norm Chow, and he was aghast.

“No, not five years,” he said. “We don’t have five years. We need to do this way faster than that.”

I’m inclined to agree with Coach Chow. I’m not sure who would be at Aloha Stadium in five years if there weren’t significant improvements. Fans, coaches and players will have their patience tested game-by-game and season-by-season.

A couple of things seem obvious in regard to Yankee third-baseman Alex Rodriguez.

First, his skills appear to be diminishing rapidly.

Second, he was signed to the worst contract in the history of sport. When the Yankees renewed A-Rod at the age of 33 for 10 years and $270 million, he was still one of the best players in baseball.

With steroids out of the equation, and A-Rod’s always-high strike-out totals, it wasn’t hard to see that the back end of this contract wouldn’t be a good deal for the club. But nobody realized that it would get this bad this quickly.

Quite simply, Rodriguez can no longer catch up with a major league fastball. He is still due $114 million over the next five years. And he has been so over-matched at the plate that Yankee manager Joe Girard has either pinch hit for him or benched him altogether in the most important games of the season. A-Rod played the good soldier initially, but was soon giving impromptu press conferences to express his unhappiness. And nobody is going to take on that contract without the Yankees picking up most of the tab.

With Derek Jeter coming off ankle surgery and Nick Swisher a free agent likely to depart, it will make for an interesting winter at Yankees headquarters.

Well, the general manager isn’t named Cashman for no reason!