Video: The NFL Playoffs’ Sweet Spot

In this week’s video, Kevin Clark and I preview the four divisional contests in what is known as the best weekend for NFL fans. Will the red-hot Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers keep things going against a team that is not quarterbacked by Joe Webb? Has Ray Lewis’s pending retirement injected new life into the Ravens? Why are the Atlanta Falcons the team that no one respects? And does Matt Schaub actually exist?

Chat: NFL Playoffs With Jason Gay

A certain knee injury in the Washington suburbs aside, last weekend’s NFL playoff games weren’t worth saying much about. This weekend should be very different. With Peyton Manning’s Broncos and Tom Brady’s Patriots among those making their January entrances, the postseason feels like it’s starting in earnest now.

To celebrate, we’ve gathered WSJ Sports columnist Jason Gay to talk it all over with Daily Fix regulars Kevin Clark, David Roth and Jeremy Gordon in a Spreecast happening right here at 1 p.m. ET Thursday. We also encourage you to come on camera from your computer and say your piece to them. RSVP at Spreecast for a reminder on when to watch and join. See you there!

Podcast: No Jack Required?

The latest Hall of Fame news has The Sports Retort divided over the greatness of Jack Morris, down to the quality of his mustache. This leads to a debate over which hall of fame is the worst, as well as an intriguing theory about how Aaron Sele got his vote. We may be the first to compare Julio Franco to Bernie Williams and Lenny Harris at the same time. Our never-ending quest to fix what’s not broken in sports leads us to how to make NFL field goals harder. Plus NFL playoff picks and much more.

The Cooperstown Waiting Game

The shutout Hall of Fame voters threw when faced with this year’s slate of candidates is just the third tossed by voting baseball writers since 1965 — or 43 fewer than Roger Clemens, who received half the vote total he needed for election, threw in his career.

This year’s induction shutout likely will differ from the last two, in 1971 and 1996, in one key way: This year’s slate has much better stats, and fewer of the rejected candidates are likely to make it in to Cooperstown. It could also differ in another: Fewer candidates may eventually get in, thanks to voters’ disgust with the steroids use associated with some candidates and tainting others indirectly. Also, some tough competition will be crowding the ballot next year.

Video: The LeBron X Replacement Challenge

The latest edition of LeBron James’s Nikes retails for almost $300. That’s not a misprint. Basketball sneakers now cost as much as an airplane ticket.

That got our team at The Sports Retort thinking: What other shoes in that price range could we play basketball in? If you’re going to spend that much to play basketball, you might as well get some other use out of the shoes.

See how the Journal’s sports editors performed in vintage collector’s sneakers, cowboy boots, office dress shoes and a piece of footwear so bizarre we didn’t know what to call them, other than Tron boots. The conclusion I came to: It’s hard to play basketball in boots with four-inch heels, but not impossible.

Seattle’s NBA Franchise Retribution

By no means is this a done deal, nor reason to bust that Vin Baker throwback jersey out of the closet. (There will probably never be a reason for that, actually.) But if the Sacramento Kings complete a reported move to Seattle, pending the sale of the franchise to an investment group led by Microsoft chairman Steve Ballmer and hedge fund manager Chris Hansen, one of the ugliest transactions in NBA history will have been ameliorated, while the stink of a potentially uglier one might endure.

It’s been an open secret over the last few years that the Maloof family, owners of the Kings, have had little intention to stay in Sacramento without funding for a new arena. Just when the city and the family neared terms on such a deal, it fell through at the last minute–once again sparking chatter that the Maloofs were dedicated to relocation. (An unlikely flirtation with Virginia Beach lasted for a few months before that officially went kaput.)

Steve Ballmer’s Sports Credentials

Could the beleaguered Sacramento Kings soon have yet another new home?

Yahoo Sports reported Wednesday that the owners of the NBA franchise are finalizing a deal to sell the Kings to a group that hopes to move the team to Seattle. The buying group, according to Yahoo Sports, include hedge-fund founder Chris Hansen and Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

A Microsoft spokesman referred questions about Ballmer’s basketball interest to Hansen. Hansen couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The Phantom Hall of Fame Class

Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds can make compelling claims to have been the best pitcher and hitter, respectively, in baseball history. Mike Piazza is near-inarguably the greatest offensive catcher the sport ever saw. Such deserving down-ballot candidates such as Tim Raines, Craig Biggio, Curt Schilling, Alan Trammell, Edgar Martinez and Jeff Bagwell—and Jack Morris, if you’re into that sort of thing—are up for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year as well. And yet, as fans await the announcement of this year’s Hall of Fame class—scheduled to arrive Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET—they are also preparing themselves for the possibility that there might not be a Hall of Fame class. For the voters who take it seriously, casting a Hall of Fame ballot is a necessarily difficult task. You don’t need to be a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America to know how intense and involved baseball arguments can get.

Memo to Musburger: There Was Also a Football Game

As the Crimson Tide quickly and relentlessly asserted themselves as the nation’s best team, last night’s BCS championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame offered few surprises. One amusing wrinkle, in a shuddering sort of way, was the copious amount of time spent by the game’s broadcasters discussing Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron’s girlfriend Katherine Webb, a statuesque Auburn alum. “You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women,” Brent Musburger remarked after the cameras showed Webb rooting in the stands alongside McCarron’s mother. “What a beautiful woman.” After finding consensus with co-host Kirk Herbstreit, Musburger also added, “If you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with pop.”

Alabama, SEC Add to Title Pile

By beating Notre Dame, 42-14, in the Bowl Championship Series title game on Monday, Alabama became the first school to repeat as college-football champion since Nebraska in 1995, and the first team to finish No. 1 in the Associated Press year-end poll for the third time in four years since Notre Dame in 1949. And that may be the third-most impressive feat to marvel about from the game. There’s the state of Alabama’s fourth straight national title and the SEC’s seventh in a row. Auburn won the title two years ago, and before the Cotton State started hoarding trophies, Florida and LSU won the prior three titles.

According to Stats Research, no other prior conference has won even four straight AP titles since they were first awarded in 1936. Twice, a conference won three in a row: the SEC, when Alabama won in 1978 and 1979 and then Georgia won the next year; and the Big Ten, when Minnesota repeated right before Ohio State’s 1942 championship. Eight other times, a conference won two straight titles, and all but twice, it was the same team winning both times. The only exceptions were the SEC’s Auburn and LSU, in 1957 and 1958; and the Southwest’s Texas Christian and Texas A&M, in 1937 and 1938. Usually, when a conference went on a title streak it was due solely to its best team repeating as national champion.