OMG IT's A Fire...sale.   It's burning us alive!

The Indians are rolling back ticket prices all over the park.

The Indians braintrust are apparently back at their computers going over the latest stats.  They recently came across this new-fangled statistical concept that they think may help them increase attendance, the law of supply and demand.

For the less mathematically inclined, try to stay with me here.  The supply  here is the number of tickets available at a certain price (a lot), and the demand is the number of people willing to pay that price for the tickets (um...not a lot).  So, they are lowering the ticket prices pretty much across the board in the hopes that they can...you know...sell more tickets.

With the Indians finishing last season with the lowest attendance in the Majors (despite the continued existence of the Pirates and Royals), it was time to do something.  Disco Choo bobblehead night just wasn't cutting it anymore.

Special consideration seems to be going to season ticket holders.  Finally some good news this offseason for the Tribe faithful.

The Indians' ticket pitch

Among the changes announced by the team:

Full-season ticket holders, regardless of seat location, bleachers included, get a free membership to the Terrace Club, the ballpark's restaurant. Membership fees were $900 or $500, depending on the type. They also get to use a suite (with 16 tickets and three parking passes) for one game and club seats for another.

Full-season ticket plans in the ballpark's lower bowl will cost 20 to 60 percent less than the same seat bought as single games.

Bleacher seats will cost $10 for all but on Opening Day — $9 for full-season ticket plans. It's the lowest price for the bleachers since 1997. "We just feel like when the bleachers are full in this ballpark," said Mike Mulhall, the Indians senior director of ticket sales and premium seating, "there's a different buzz, there's a different feel in Progressive Field."

Upper box seats have been cut $8, to $12 to $16 per seat from $20 to $24 last season.

On Sundays during the second half of last season, the Indians tested a fixed price for parties of four. It's been expanded for the entire 2011 season, except on Opening Day. For all games except April 1, a foursome can buy four tickets, parking and four hot dogs, soft drinks and ball caps for $96.

Hopefully this gets some more butts in the seats.

Manny Acta's doing his due diligence this offseason by examining a Colon. Bartolo Colon to be exact. Enrique Rojas, of ESPN Deportes, tweeted that Acta was going to watch Bartolo Colon's Dominican League Winter ball start on Tuesday night. Colon was replaced after 5.1 IP, giving up four runs, three earned, striking out three and walking one batter intentionally.

Colon, who has not pitched in the Majors since July 2009, is being looked by a few teams, most notably, the Indians and Pirates.

He pitched in 162 games for the Wahoos, going 75-45 with a 3.92 ERA from 1997-2002.

After a late-night shocker, CP Lee finds himself back in the City of Brotherly Love to join a rotation of Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels as the Phillies catapult themselves to the head of the NL class. While it was widely reported that only the Yankees and the Rangers were in on Lee and that the Yankees would simply outspend any competition (and drastically so) as they did with Sabathia two years ago, the Phillies were able to add Clifton Phifer back into the fold, presumably on the idea that the Phillies are a better bet to win in the coming years than the Yankees (no...seriously) and than the Rangers.

While it has been widely reported that Lee left money on the table to join the Phils, it is worth noting that it looks like he signed a 5-year, $120M deal with the Phillies, netting him an annual salary of $24M, which makes him the highest paid pitcher...earning $1M per season more than CC. The Yankees' reported final offer was for 6 years and $132M ($22M per season) with a player option for $16M in 2017, which would have lowered the AAV of the final Yankees' offer to $21M per year.

Did Lee pass up a guarantee of more money from New York?

Yes, but he'll actually earn more per year in Philly and he'll become a FA two years sooner, with his thought process perhaps being that he can earn more on the open market prior to the 2016 season than he would have signed away by joining the Yankees.

Regardless of whether that decision is a prudent one or not, Lee will join the better team in the Phillies for a higher annual salary than the Yankees were willing to offer. Whether the Yankees were unwilling to go above $23M (CC's salary) is up for debate as Sabathia can opt out of his Yankee deal after next season, which he very well could based on the demand for Lee. While the fact that Lee will not be donning the pinstripes in the Bronx gives some measure of satisfaction, he WILL be donning pinstripes of another color in Philadelphia for a team that is quickly making it's claim as the Yankees/Red Sox of the NL.

From an Indians' perspective, Lee ($24M) and Sabathia ($23M) are now the two highest paid pitchers in MLB, three years after each started the season for the AL Central defending champs in 2008, a team that is now only remembered for what never was...

After the Big Ten expanded to 12 teams this past summer, we all knew the conference was going to split into newly formed divisions starting next year. We also knew the Big Ten logo, which has the number 11 discreetly embedded into the design, would need to be updated. Yesterday afternoon, Jim Delany and the Big Ten conference released the names of the divisions and the new logo. They are awful.

The Big Ten logo (pictured above), is a basic block letters design. The “i” in the word Big was changed to a “1” and the “g” was made to look like a zero -- apparently a move that was made to honor the original ten members. No need to feel like outsiders Penn State and Nebraska, it’s not like your conference logo went out of its way to exclude you.

Oh, it’s not over. The names of the new divisions, you ask? Legends and Leaders. The conference had nearly half a year to think of division names, and they came up with Legends and Leaders. Why not just name the divisions Dumb and Dumber? We could design the field that the football championship game will be played on next year around the tuxes that Lloyd and Harry wore to the charity event in the movie. One end zone would be neon orange and the other would be powder blue. The trophy for the championship game could be named “Pretty Bird”. It would be a huge trophy with the top made in the likeness of the bird that Harry sold to the blind kid that had its head taped onto its body.

The possibilities are endless.

With his brother's success with the Jets, and his success with the Browns defense this season, Browns defensive coordinator Rob Ryan's name  continues to pop up as a possible head coaching candidate somewhere next season.

When asked in Friday's press conference as to whether or not he's heard from the Broncos about their now open head coaching gig, Ryan admitted that he had heard from them, but danced around the question a little.

“I’ve heard from the Broncos,” the Browns defensive coordinator said. “A great buddy of mine is their defensive coordinator — Don Martindale. It’s his first time coordinating. He’s putting up numbers that are pretty God-awful.  The thing is he’s coaching his butt off. I taught him how to prepare. That team will be all right if they keep him there. If they don’t, they’re losing out on a (good) coach.”

The University of Akron advanced to its second consecutive Men’s Soccer National Championship Game with a 2-1 victory over the Michigan Wolverines in a national semifinal game played in Santa Barbara, California.

The Zips broke a 1-1 tie in the 73^rd minute when Kofi Sarkodie headed in a free kick struck by Michael Nanchoff from the right of the penalty box across the mouth of the goal.

Sarkodie was unguarded and calmly flicked the ball with his head into the back of the net. The Zips, after the goal, were able to kill the clock by passing the ball around the pitch while the Wolverines gave chase. Michigan did not have another serious scoring chance.

The Wolverines (17-5-3)  scored the first goal of the game just two minutes into the contest. Senior Justin Meram scored his 17^th goal of the year from near the top of the circle outside the penalty area, driving a hard shot into the upper-left corner net past the sprawling Akron netminder, David Meves.

Michigan held the 1-0 lead until the 33^rd minute of the game when Zips freshman Perry Kitchen drilled a shot from 35 yards out that beat Wolverines goaltender Chris Blais. Akron out-shot Michigan 14-4 in the first half, but could not take the lead due to a number of critical saves from Blais.

The teams played even until the 73^rd minute when Scott Caldwell was fouled from behind by a Michigan defender. This led to the free kick that Sarkodie was able to head home.

The Zips (21-1-2) will face Louisville, the top seed in the tournament at 20-0-3, who defeated North Carolina 2-1 prior to the Akron win.

Last year Akron was unbeaten heading into the championship game against Virginia. The Zips and Cavaliers played to a 0-0 draw, but Virginia claimed the title on penalty kicks, 3-2. Akron will be looking for its first national championship in any sport, and will have to defeat a familiar face to do so. Louisville coach Ken Lolla left the Akron program after the 2005 season to take the head job at Louisville. He was replaced by current Zips coach Caleb Porter.

Not to pile on poor Jake Delhomme, who's played mildly un-bad for most of the last 2 games (both wins), but it looks like his much-awaited return to the backup role is drawing nigh.

Colt McCoy practiced on a limited basis today for the first time since sustaining a dreaded high ankle injury against the Jacksonville Jaguars.  This, of course, does not necessarily mean that he will be tabbed to start this week in Buffalo, but it does at mean he's getting closer, and the odds of him returning before the end of the season are high.

Whew.

Out of today's practice were LB Scott Fujita, LB Titus Brown, TE/WR Evan Moore, and RG Porkchop Womack.  Mangini has stated that Womack will play on Sunday.

Just two years removed from being the Indians' starting 1B, Ryan Garko has signed with the...wait for it...Samsung Lions of the Korean Baseball Organization for $300K. Garko spent 5 years as a member of the Tribe, posting a cumulative .805 OPS with his best season coming in 2007, when he swatted a career high 21 HR and posted an OPS of .842, which was the 22^nd highest OPS in the AL, just above those posted by Robby Cano and Paul Konerko.

Seriously...

In the year-and-a-half since Garko left the Indians, he has come to the plate 165 times in MLB, posting a line of .202 BA / .284 OBP / .248 SLG / .532 OPS as a member of the Giants and Rangers. Garko's struggles since leaving the Tribe weren't unique to MLB as he posted only a .705 OPS in AAA Oklahoma City as a 29-year-old as a Ranger farmhand.

The player acquired from the Giants, 22-year-old LHP Scott Barnes, is coming off of an Arizona Fall League stint that saw him strike out 28 hitters while he walked only 7 in 24 1/3 innings of work for the Peoria Javelinas en route to posting a 3.65 ERA under the desert sun.

While Garko heads off to Korea in an attempt to prolong his playing career, he will be remembered on the North Coast for double-fisting tall boys of Budweiser in the AL Central clinching celebration and for his ill-advised trip to LF, which caused a fissure between CP Lee (who couldn't figure out why Garko was in the OF) and The Atomic Wedgie (who was responsible for Garko being in the OF) in the contentious 2009 season.

All told, he was a useful player if his usefulness was limited as an Indian. Once that usefulness ran out and he was ready to see his salary rise due to arbitration, he found his way out of Cleveland...and now out of MLB.

Once upon a time, he was “Garko-my-God-did-you-see-how-far-he-hit-that” and now he is simply “Garko-my-God-did-you-see-where-he-had-to-go-to-get-guaranteed-money”.

Disgruntled Indians fans will ask "Why we can't have nice things?" This week, we found out why. Jayson Werth inked a monster deal with the Washington Nationals totaling $126M over seven years. Not to be outdone, speedy left fielder Carl Crawford John Hancocked the dotted line in Boston on a seven-year pact worth $142M. Want to know why the Indians can't be big players in free agency? This is exactly why.

You have the two problems with Major League Baseball financials directly in front of you. The Washington Nationals, perennial NL East doormat, had to overpay for a big name like Werth, arguably the second-best free agent outfielder. Then, without batting an eye, the Red Sox handed a blank check to Brian Peters, Crawford's agent, and said, "Here. Write us a number."

What does this mean for us? It means that you should enjoy the remaining three years we have of Shin-Soo Choo. Luckily, as Paul Cousineau updated for me on our Cleveland Indians forum, the arbitration process only looks at players' awards via arbitration, not their open market contract. So a three-year extension to eat up the arbitration years remains a possibility. Perhaps a three-year deal in the $24-30M range could get it done.

Apologies to anyone who read the previous post and went all doom-and-gloom. I was under the impression that the arbitration process used comparable players and what they were making. However, the process just examines the history of the arbitration process and the awards given out to comparable players.

In other words, for now, the Werth/Crawford deals have next to no effect on the Shin-Soo Choo extension talks. But, these two contracts cement the fact that Choo is 99.9% gone after the 2013 season or before.

After being snubbed by the Big Ten Media and coaches for conference honors this year, Terrelle Pryor was upset. The first and second all Big-Ten teams did not include the Ohio State quarterback, and following the announcement, he tweeted his frustrations, "Damn I must be the worst Qb/ player. I might quit football."

When college football's regular season ends, the award ceremonies begin. With other standout quarterbacks like Cam Newton and Denard Robinson garnering a ton of national interest, Pryor feels left out. He recently talked about the matter:

"I'll put it like this: You put me in any of their offenses, any of them, and I'd dominate," He later added "I'd dominate the nation. What those guys do, that's what they're supposed to do in their offense. They carry the ball 30 times a game. I carry the ball maybe five times. There are times I didn't even run the ball in a game. You put me in any of their offenses, where I can run the ball and have a choice to throw, I would dominate college football."

But he doesn't. Pryor chose Ohio State because he didn't want to play in a system-offense. He wanted to learn the quarterback position and take the next step toward becoming an NFL quarterback. Because of that desire, he chose to play at Ohio State over Michigan and Oregon.  And because of his choice to play at Ohio State, he doesn't get the statistics he would if he had picked the Wolverines or the Ducks. Fortunately for Buckeye fans, Pryor know's what's really important:

"People get into the statistical thing, and at the end of the day, what's the statistic that really matters?" Pryor said.

30-4. That's Pryor's career record at Ohio State. Those are the only numbers that matter.