Guaranteeing a Super Bowl Title: Not Just Rex Ryan Does It

So, here we are. The Carolina Panthers are Super Bowl champions.

So says Ryan Kalil, the Pro Bowl center who recently took an ad out in the Charlotte Observer guaranteeing that Carolina would raise the Lombardi trophy in New Orleans in February.

Of course, Kalil's prediction doesn't exactly come out of nowhere. Carolina is in possession of possibly the most electrifying QB in the league, Cam Newton, who exploded onto the scene last year by setting a rookie record for passing yards and broke the league record for rushing scores by a signal-caller. Carolina will also return David Gettis, who was on track to be the #2 receiver last year before tearing his ACL in camp. And Carolina's defense gets back its two best players this year, both of whom tore their ACLs in the early going of 2011 (what's with my teams and ACL tears this last year??): Thomas Davis and Jon Beason. On top of that, they drafted another one, Luke Kuechly, who promises to be on their level. Even if none of those three things works out as planned, Carolina's defense can scarcely be as bad as last year's - there's a reason Cam had to throw so often that he set the rookie passing record.

It is, however, receiving quite an amount of pub. Kalil's ad was the lead story on an admittedly-slow-news-day edition of PTI yesterday, and discussion of the ad is flying around message boards, with the general tone seeming to be: You've got to make the playoffs to win the Super Bowl, bud.

Carolina did win just 6 games last year but came on strong at the end of the season. They won 4 of their last 6 games of 2011 and let at least 5 winnable games slip away. The Panthers were 6-9 going into their last game of 2011 and they could very easily have been 8-7 or 9-6 and been right in the thick of the playoff race. It doesn't hurt their chances that New Orleans, which would have been the prohibitive divisional favorite, has been decimated by the suspensions handed out by Roger Goodell in the wake of the bounty scandal.

It remains to be seen whether Carolina has the horses to make this guarantee not look dumb. (Please, for the love of God, let all our players' ACLs remain intact this preseason.) But it's nice to see some swagger in Charlotte.

When Your Baseball Team Is Bad

The Cubs are bad. They are awful. They are atrocious. They are frighteningly terrible.

All these things are true.

And yet I find myself watching them daily.

This is not something I do with most bad teams. Pretty much only the Cubs and Notre Dame football can get away with being awful and have me still watch all of their games, although now that I have NFL Sunday Ticket (did you know it's at its lowest price in almost a decade? Did you? Did you? DID YOU KNOW THAT?!?!?!?!?!), the Carolina Panthers might be headed that way too — granted, they're not going to be awful. Or at least, I hope not.

The Cubs are an exception. They are not always, but this year is a special case. The Age of Theo has provided a reason to follow, even through all the head-slappingly awful baseball.

I'm not a Theo slurper (I personally think there was little reason the Cubs had to be this bad — the unconscionable trade where the Cubs shipped Carlos Zambrano out for Chris Volstad without saving much more than a handful of sunflower seeds from the deal was pointless and probably made the team 3 or 4 games worse, for instance), but there's no question he's made some interesting and exciting moves that have made the team more interesting to follow this year even as they collapse.

The first signing the Cubs made that made me think we'd be alright was David DeJesus. Now, DeJesus is a nothing signing in the big scheme of things. But he's the kind of player that can give you solid production for less-than-solid-production price. He's making $4.25 million this year and he's one of the better offensive players on the team (this is probably not a good thing, but still) and is a dynamite defender. There's little doubt DeJesus has been worth the money.

Not long after that, though, there was the Bomb. The shot across the bow of the rest of the National League that made us sure we were in good hands.

Anthony Rizzo.

I will spend the rest of my life wondering why the hell San Diego thought it was a good idea to ship Rizzo, the crown jewel of the haul they got for Adrian Gonzalez a year before, out for Andrew Cashner. Cashner, a solid prospect, is probably never going to be healthy enough to be a starting pitcher, and the Padres had to have known this already. It was common knowledge.

But Rizzo's weak start to his MLB career in San Diego was enough to pitch him to Chicago. Jed Hoyer, a Theo protege, drafted or traded for Rizzo three times.

Rizzo has been gangbusters, sickeningly good so far. Rarely is he cheated. His swing has been altered for the better. He's got 4 homers in a week and a half and everything that comes off his bat seems to be a frozen rope. It's frankly difficult to see him NOT turning into an MVP-type stud that carries the Cubs offensively, maybe the best Cubs offensive player since Sammy Sosa stopped taking B-12 shots.

As bad as the Cubs are, you can see it getting better. Travis Wood, who Theo fleeced from Cincinnati for about-to-be-a-free-agent Sean Marshall, has come on strong over the last month and is threatening to be a piece of the puzzle. Jeff Samardzija, who's been up and (mostly) down in his big-league career, has shown flashes of potentially being a dominant pitcher down the line. Starlin Castro, even during what seems to be a regression year, has still been more than solid at the plate and is getting better in the field. Darwin Barney is just good enough with the bat that he, and his golden second baseman's glove, play every day in the field, and he's cheap. Even Alfonso Soriano has been good enough to make us dream that maybe someone will take his contract off our hands if we pay most of it.

And there's more help coming. Brett Jackson is coming soon. Jorge Soler and Albert Almora are top-of-the-line guys that will be providing reinforcements in the future. James Russell has emerged as a fireman, almost as good in the role as Carlos Marmol once was (before he got paid a gazillion dollars and forgot how to pitch). There's lots of reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, things will be better soon.