#5 St. Louis Triumphant
No, not the Cardinals. We’ll get to them. The St. Louis Rams had to be the most improbable winner of the weekend. Who would have thought that the heretofore winless Rams were capable of beating the New Orleans Saints? Just looking at the performances the two teams put up last week – New Orleans absolutely beat down the Indianapolis Colts while the Rams managed to make Cowboys’ QB Tony Romo look like an All-Pro – this looked like it would be a rout for the Saints. What a difference a week makes.

#4 409 and Counting
Penn State Coach Joe Paterno’s Nitany Lions won a slushy, ugly 10-7 victory over an unranked opponent on Saturday. Meh – except that was the 409th win of Joe Pa’s long, long, long career. 409 is the magic number that makes Paterno the winningest coach in the history of Division I football.

#3 The Brady Sanction
Tom Brady looked like a mere mortal on Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The New England Patriots‘ quarterback wasn’t bad. He wasn’t very good, either.  He was just… OK. OK was not enough to beat Big Ben and the Steelers. The question is: was it an off-week for Brady, a fluke, or a template that other teams can copy to neutralize New England’s most consistent weapon?  I’m sure that I’m not the only one wondering.  In a league of copy cats, we shouldn’t have to wait very long to find out the answer.

#2 When 2 OTs Just Aren’t Enough
Stanford beat USC on Saturday, as expected. Stanford came into the game undefeated and carrying the #6 tag. Unranked USC gave them everything they could handle and then some more and then some more after that. It took a fumble in the third OT for Stanford to come away with the win.

#1 The World Champion St. Louis Cardinals
Friday night’s Game 7 of the World Series didn’t even make our top 5 most anticipated events of the weekend… because we didn’t really believe it would go 7 games.  But the St. Louis Cardinals, who we again remind you had absolutely no business even making it into the playoffs, forced a Game 7 and then won it, making them the Champions of the baseball world.

#5 Defense-Lover’s Special
The Cleveland Browns didn’t score a touchdown on Sunday, but their two field goals – each from more than 50 yards out – were one better than the Seattle Seahawks could manage. The 6-3 victory was ugly, but it still counts as a win.

#4 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic
The name is a mouthful, but the PGA’s annual trip to Disney World proved to be a dream vacation for Luke Donald. He was already the #1 ranked golfer in the world, but his gutsy, come-from-behind victory at Disney should erase the doubt from anyone’s mind that he is fully deserving of the title. Donald’s six straight birdies on the final nine holes were more than enough to put him over the top in dramatic fashion.

#3 QB Debut Sunday
Wunderkind Tim Tebow (pictured) made his debut as an NFL starter on Sunday. He spent the first 56 ½ minutes in sleep mode, putting up a goose egg against the winless Miami Dolphins. But oh, those final 3 ½ minutes. Tebow led 2 touchdown drives and managed a two-point conversion to come back from a 15-0 hole to force overtime, from which his Denver Broncos came away victorious.

Meanwhile, Washington’s new starter John Beck put up respectable numbers with 22 completed passes for 279 yards, but it wasn’t enough to get the stumbling Redskins past the Carolina Panthers.

And in Minnesota, the Vikings’ new starter Christian Ponder played well in the first half, starting his career with a 72-yard pass followed up two plays later with his first TD pass as an NFL starting quarterback. Unfortunately for Ponder, his top target in the second half seemed to be Packers cornerback Charles Woodson. Still, considering his first start came against the league-leading, undefeated Green Bay Packers, it was a solid debut.

#2 Rugby World Cup Championship
Rugby is foreign to most American sports fans, but the World Cup Championship game on Sunday opened some eyes to football’s rougher cousin. New Zealand looked to be running away with the Cup in the first half, but France came storming back to make it a close affair. As the final minutes ticked away – or ticked upward as the clock works in Rugby – the game degenerated into half the players in a pig pile and the rest standing around helplessly. When the clock finally hit 80:00, New Zealand kicked the ball into the stands and had their name engraved into the cup as champions of the world. Watching this game reminded me a little bit of when I first started watching hockey. I didn’t understand all of it, but I thought it was pretty cool.

#1 Pujols Power
6 RBIs sounds like a lot for one game, but when three of those runs batted in are yourself… it’s still a lot. Albert Pujols joined a select group of hitters with his 3 HRs, 6 RBI performance on Saturday night and brought his St. Louis Cardinals one step closer to a most improbable World Series title.

(U.S. Air Force photo)

#5 The Pan Am Games
Volleyball! Water polo! Archery! Basketball! Boxing! Cycling! Soccer! Handball! Hockey! Wrestling! Other sports that Americans don’t watch! The second week of the Pan Am Games kicks the festivities into high gear with more action than one person can watch, even with picture-in-picture.

#4 Enter the Palmer Years
The Oakland Raiders gave up at least one first round draft pick – and quite probably two – to bring quarterback Carson Palmer into the fold two days after Jason Campbell was lost for the next six weeks. The Raiders are all in for this year after mortgaging the future. They now have exactly two – TWO! – picks in the 2012 draft, one in each of the fifth and sixth rounds. Can Palmer, who hasn’t played since last season, get himself ready to play by Sunday? The Raiders sure hope so.

#3 Auburn vs LSU

Auburn already has two losses this season. It’s unthinkable that they’d lose a third, isn’t it? LSU is undefeated and ranked #1. They couldn’t possibly lose – at home – to the #20 team, could they? The #20 team that made a QB switch mid-way through last week’s game and will give freshman Clint Moseley his first start on Saturday, no less. Something big has to happen when these two meet this weekend.

#2 It’s Tebow Time
It’s Tebow Time in Denver. Tim Tebow will finally get his chance to take the reigns of the Broncos on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins. Tebow’s road to NFL starter was a bit rougher than he might have hoped, but he’s arrived now.  An away game against a winless and hopeless Miami team is just the ticket to break in a new face of the franchise or bust experiment.

#1 The World Series
The Texas Rangers have a chance for redemption after falling just short of the goal last year. The St. Louis Cardinals had no business making the playoffs, much less going all the way to the Fall Classic. Yet here they are, poised to play for their eleventh World Series Championship in eighteen tries. Not too shabby for a team that was 10 1/2 games out with a little over a month left in the regular season. There’s something to be said for peaking at the right time.

#5 NBA Basketball… Not
After months of negotiations, the NBA owners and players seem to be farther apart than ever. It’s a battle royale pitting the big market owners vs. the small market owners vs. the marquee players vs. the rest of the players. The winner is yet to be determined. The loser is anyone who was counting on a full NBA season this year.

The Real #5 – It’s Timmy Time
Tim Tebow is not the prototypical NFL quarterback. Despite his impressive college credentials, many observers think that Tebow does not have the skill set to make it as an quarterback in the NFL. Even the Denver Broncos, who drafted Tebow, never seemed sold on Tebow as a real, live starting QB. But Sunday… what, the Broncos are off this week? That’s it. No number 5 this week. Moving on to the Top 4 -

#4 Bank of America 500
The balance of the NASCAR universe has been off kilter all year as ever-Champ Jimmie Johnson slugged along near, but not at, the top of the heap. In two weeks he surged from the brink of elimination to the cusp of victory. He’s now just 4 slim points behind points leader Carl Edwards (Kevin Harvick is in between the two, one point behind Edwards). Saturday could be the day (well, the night – the race starts at 7:30 PM ET) that Johnson takes back what’s been his for the last five years.

#3 San Francisco 49ers at Detroit Lions
The San Francisco 49ers look like winners. Two weeks ago, the pulled out a plucky, come-from-behind win. Last week they put on a clinic, annihilating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 48-3 in the most one-sided game in recent memory. The Detroit Lions are 5-0. I can’t believe I just typed those words. But it is true – the Lions are, in fact, 5-0 for the first time since the late Precambrian Era. Will the Niners suffer a let down after last week’s nigh-perfect performance or will they be the ones to knock the Lions from the ranks of the unbeaten?

#2 MLB Conference Series on the Cheap
The teams from Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, and Texas are baseball’s final four. The sight of the Brewers, Cardinals, Tigers, and Rangers battling for the crown is a beautiful thing for fans of parity in Major League Baseball. The big market teams in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago could not spend their way to the World Series. The total payroll for the four remaining teams combined is $388.9 Million. Put into perspective, the Philadelphia Phillies’ and New York Yankees’ combined payroll expenditures were $374.7 million, and both were ejected from the hunt in the Divisional Round.

#1 Bernard Hopkins vs. Chad Dawson
Bernard Hopkins, the 46-year-old WBC Light Heavyweight Champion, will make his first title defense Saturday against relative youngster Chad Dawson. BHop waxed eloquent about their age difference this week. “I could be his father… If you do the math, he could be my son.” Hopkins philosophized. “I’m 46, he’s 29. I had him early; it all fits into the scheme of the professor versus the good student who wants to be a great student.” Paternity potentialities aside, Hopkins does have more career knockouts (32) than Dawson has fights (31), although that particular statistic could change Saturday.

Never has so much happened in a span of less than two hours to shake the baseball world. Spectacular defense? Check. Two-out, bottom of the ninth heroics? A couple of them. Triple play? Yep. Walk off, game-winning, playoff-clinching home run in the 12th inning? Yeah, we got that. Capped off by the Tampa Bay’s so-improbable-it-strains-believability comeback against the New York Yankees (which nicely parallels the Rays’ so-improbable-it-strains-believability comeback against the Red Sox over the course of the past month), the final day of the 2011 regular season was one to remember.

In honor of MLB’s regular season Fabulous Finale, we present the Top 5 Fantastic Finishes of the weekend:

#5 AAA 400
Kurt Busch & Jimmie Johnson battling it out for the checkered flag from the restart? What’s not to like?

#4 Auburn vs. South Carolina
Auburn isn’t the team it once was. Amazing what a couple of guys going off to the NFL will do to a team, especially when they’re guys like Cam Newton and Nick Fairly. Saturday, Auburn looked like their old selves against #10 South Carolina, scoring a last minute (well, last minute and thirty-eight second) touchdown to take the lead and keep it.

#3 Rivals Fall Apart
Cowboy fans say their two favorite teams are the Cowboys and whoever’s playing the Eagles. Eagle’s fans root for their Eagles and whoever’s playing the Cowboys. Fans of both teams can say that at least one of their two favorites won. Both the ‘Boys and the Birds blew huge leads in the fourth quarter within minutes of one another. The Detroit Lions improved to 4-0 by taking advantage as Tony Romo self-destructed on live TV. The San Francisco 49ers proved that slow and steady wins the race as they came back from 20 points down against a far flashier Eagles.

#2 Minnesota Does It Again
Unfortunately for the Minnesota Vikings, the “IT” in question is blowing a big lead in the fourth quarter. This time, the beneficiary of Minnesota’s second half collapse was the Kansas City Chiefs. Minnesota has provided four of the most exciting, dramatic finishes of the season so far. They’ve just been on the losing end of all four. Two questions about the Vikes: How can a team with Adrian Peterson on the roster fail to run out the clock with a big lead four weeks in a row? And how many more losses before we see the debut of Quarterback of the Future Christian Ponder?

#1 Buffalo at Cincinnati
The Buffalo Bills‘ perfect season came to a screeching halt against… wait for it… the Cincinnati Bengals. The same Cincinnati Bengals whose only win until now came against the woeful Cleveland Browns. The Bengals quarterbacked by rookie Andy Dalton. Those Cincinnati Bengals went toe to toe with the giant killers who slapped around Tom Brady and the New England Patriots last week and won on a field goal with four ticks left on the clock.

#5 Doesn’t anyone want to win the AL Wild Card?
The Boston Red Sox have been playing just awful baseball for the last month. The Tampa Bay Rays have been intermittently playing well and choking in big games. The New York Yankees have their spot locked up and and control – or at least heavily influence – who wins the Wild Card spot with their final six games split between the two contenders. Neither team looks to have the legs to go deep into the playoffs, but come on, somebody’s got to step up and take it.

#4 What’s up with the Minnesota Vikings?
Remember a couple of years back when the Philadelphia Eagles played to a tie with the Cincinnati Bengals because Donovan McNabb didn’t know that there was only one overtime period? Maybe McNabb, now the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, forgot that there are two halves to a football game. The Vikings look like two completely different teams – the competent one that plays the first half and the inept one that blows a big lead in the second half every week.

#3 Who was that guy and what did he do with the real Tom Brady?
Through the entire 2010 season, Tom Brady threw a total of 4 interceptions. Total. For the year. Sunday afternoon against the Buffalo Bills, the Brady impersonator under center for the New England Patriots tossed 4 INTs. He also tossed 4 TDs. But in the end, the Patriots blew a 20 point lead and the All-Offense Bowl turned on the play of the defense.

#2 Are the Lions for real?
The Detroit Lions are 3-0, including two wins on the road. They overcame a 20 point 1st half deficit to come back and beat the Minnesota Vikings in Minnesota. Of course, Minnesota has blown a lead in every game so far. Before that, they beat a questionable Tampa Bay team and absolutely routed the as-of-yet winless Kansas City Chiefs. But you can only play the teams on your schedule and the Lions are 3-0 for the first time in 30 years. Can Lions fans allow themselves to believe in Matthew Stafford? Could this team be for real?

#1 How did LSU pass Oklahoma?
LSU didn’t just squeak past Oklahoma in the AP Poll. With 42 of the 60 first place votes going to the Tigers, they seized the top spot with authority. Was their win over #16 West Virginia really that convincing? Or did Oklahoma’s 38-28 victory over unranked Missouri look shakier than I thought? Neither team plays against serious competition next week (no offense, Ball State and Kentucky), so it’s unlikely that their roles will reverse before October 8th, when LSU and Oklahoma play #12 Florida and #17 Texas respectively.

#5 San Diego Chargers at New England Patriots
Well, this one wasn’t much of a game. San Diego was never really in it. But seeing Tom Brady put on another clinic, throwing for another 400+ yards, was something to see. Everyone even seems to have forgotten about his inebriation-promoting advice to fans this past week. I guess when you just win, you get to say whatever bonehead thing comes into your head without repercussion.

#4 Tampa Bay Rays at Boston Red Sox
The Tampa Bay Rays had to win at least three out of four in order to remain in the Wild Card hunt. Despite losing two games earlier in the week to the Baltimore Orioles, three out of four against the Boston Red Sox remained the goal for the Rays. And the Rays won… three out of four. Now Joe Maddon’s team finds themselves 2 games behind the Sox in the race for the Wild Card with just ten games left to play. Hope is fading in Tampa Bay, but it’s still alive.

#3 Oklahoma at Florida State
Whoda thunk that FSU could hang tough with #1 Oklahoma with a true freshman backup at Quarterback? Oklahoma won the game going away and cemented their standing as #1. But where does a relatively close loss leave the #5 ranked Florida State Seminoles?

#2 Philadelphia Eagles at Atlanta Falcons
 Atlanta Falcons Quarterback Matt Ryan had to have an inferiority complex coming into Sunday night’s game against the Eagles. All the talk was about Mike Vick and how strongly everyone in Atlanta felt about him, one way or the other. Ryan can take some solace in knowing that he was not the worst quarterback on the field Sunday night. He wasn’t the best, either. Mike Vick displayed the freakish physical skills that make him a superstar combined with a new, more mature wisdom that kept him in the pocket when appropriate. He also fumbled twice and threw an interception (that shouldn’t have been, but bad calls are a part of the game).

#1 Mayweather vs. Ortiz
There are few spectacles that leave a sports writer without words. The Saturday night title bout between welterweights Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. and “Victorious” Victor Ortiz came really close. First, Ortiz head-butted Mayweather – intentionally from all appearances. Then Ortiz kissed Mayweather by way of apology. Just… kissed him. Then Ortiz hugged him in a more conventional apology in the center of the ring.

Mayweather responded by lashing out with a left and a right that sent Ortiz sprawling. It was a legal, if somewhat dubious move, timed exactly as the fight resumed. This was the kind of people-will-be-talking-about-this-Monday type of fight that boxing needed. Mayweather, ever aware of his profile, immediately hinted at the possibility of a rematch.

#5 Floyd Mayweather vs. Victor Ortiz
The sweet science isn’t what it once was. Somewhere around the time that Mike Tyson bit off a chuck of Evander Holyfield‘s ear, the sport of boxing just sort of fell down a few rungs. Saturday night’s welterweight bout between former Ring Magazine World Champion Floyd Mayweather and current WBC Champ Victor Ortiz could be just the kind of fight to draw fans back to boxing. Of course, being a pay-per-view event it will pretty much be seen by only the hard core fans anyway. But still, good press and word of mouth from this fight might be the start of something good for boxing.

#4 San Diego Chargers at New England Patriots
One problem with evaluating NFL teams so early in the season is you can’t tell if the winning team was that good or the losing team was really that bad. San Diego‘s defense made Vikings quarterback Donovan McNabb look absolutely dreadful on Sunday. Or maybe Donovan McNabb made Donovan McNabb look awful. Really, 39 yards passing? Tom Brady took all the fuss about Cam Newton‘s 400+ yard day personally, so he threw for over 500 yards Monday night. How good are the Pats? Is San Diego for real? We still won’t know for sure, but we’ll have a better picture after Sunday’s matchup.

#3 Tampa Bay Rays at Boston Red Sox
The last time these two teams met, just last weekend, the Tampa Bay Rays swept the Boston Red Sox in a three game series in St. Petersburg. When the series started, the Rays were six and a half games behind the Sox in the Wild Card hunt. Now the lead is down to three games. Another sweep would put the Rays in control with just a week left in the regular season. Of course beating the Red Sox seven straight times, four of them at Fenway, is something of a stretch goal. It isn’t actually impossible, but it isn’t so likely, either. Splitting the series will do the Rays no good. Three out of four is about the least that the Rays can accept if they want to keep hope alive.

#2 Philadelphia Eagles at Atlanta Falcons
After making such a fuss about Mike Vick‘s performance last weekend, how can I not pick his return to Atlanta – for the first time as a starter – as one of the five most eagerly anticipated events of the coming weekend? The Eagles handily beat an injury-depleted Rams team last weekend. The Falcons were unceremoniously crushed by the Chicago Bears in their season opener. Both have a lot on the line for such an early season matchup.

#1 Oklahoma at Florida State

The Florida State Seminoles spent the early part of the 21st Century in the shadow of their cross-state rivals, the Florida Gators.  Those days ended, at least for now, when Florida quarterback Timmy Tebow grew up and ran off to the Denver Broncos.  Now the FSU Seminoles are the big bad in the state of Florida, and they have a #5 ranking to prove it.  The bad news for FSU is that one of those four teams ranked above them, the one perched at the very top of the ladder, is coming to Tallahassee Saturday night.  The good news is that they don’t actually have to beat Oklahoma in order to maintain their good standing.  But if they want to establish themselves as the best… well, Oklahoma might have a thing or two to say about that.

Football, Baseball, Golf, NASCAR, Tennis

#5 Texas Rangers at Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox own the best record in the American League and have a tenuous 1 1/2 game lead in the toughest division in baseball. The Texas Rangers were the American League Champions last year and are currently 3 1/2 games ahead of their competition in the AL West. Both teams are putting their dominance in their respective divisions on the line when they square off for a three game series this weekend.

#4 Seven Days in Utopia
Really good sports movies are too few and too far in between. We haven’t had a treat at the theaters since The Blindside in 2009. Seven Days in Utopia, hitting theaters on Friday, may be just the film we’ve been waiting for. There are no explosions, no aliens – there isn’t even any tackling. But a fictional movie about golf has to be at least as good as watching the real thing, right? (Tin Cup excluded.)

#3 Advocare 500
There are 12 races left in the 2011 NASCAR Season, but for all but 12 of the drivers, there are only two that really mean anything. For the drivers on the bubble, this weekend and next are the last two opportunities they have to make their case for inclusion in the Sprint Cup Chase for the Cup. New rules introduced this season put a huge premium on wins for those drivers on the cusp, so there will be plenty of Ricky Bobby-style “win or crash trying” racing in Atlanta on Sunday.

#2 The U.S. Open
Sure, it’s just the third and fourth rounds this weekend, but considering how much trouble Maria Sharapova had in the first round and the fact that Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova has already been kicked to the curb you can’t take anything for granted.

#1 Oregon Ducks vs LSU Tigers
NCAA Football is gearing up this weekend. While most of the top schools are building up to full steam by playing an arranged patsy to start the season, LSU and Oregon have a different plan. The #3 and #4 ranked teams in college football will meet at a neutral site on Saturday to kick off the 2011 season with verve. One will be on the path to BCS recognition, the other will find themselves in a 0-1 hole. That’s a lot to play for in the first week of the Football year.

Hurricane Irene

#5 Track and Field World Championships
The World Championship of Track and Field events started this weekend in South Korea. Without doubt, the highlight of the weekend was Jamaican Usain Bolt’s ridiculously easy win in the 100 meter race. The world’s fastest man looked like a man among boys, looking back at the distant pack as he won easily. More impressive than the fact that he set the fastest pace for the day is the way Bolt made it look effortless as he did so. Too bad his sloppy false start on Sunday put an end to his streak.

#4 Detroit Lions beat New England Patriots.
The Detroit Lions not only beat the mighty New England Patriots. Nobody saw that coming, of course. Unless you count Buzzer Eagle, where we called the result last week. Just a reminder that you should always listen to us.

#3 Rays-Jays
The contest between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays wasn’t even close. The 12-0 drubbing would not have made for compelling viewing had it not been for the spectacular interaction between the wind and David Price’s pitches. By some cosmic alignment between the forces of nature and the force of Price’s arm, his fastball moved around like an Ed Walsh Spitball. Price struck out 14 and held the Jays to five hits and no runs scored.

#2 MLL Championship
The MLL Lacrosse Semi-final round on Saturday had tremendous athleticism on display, two David vs. Goliath matchups between big market teams and smaller market franchises, and a trip to the league championships on the line. One David (Hamilton) and one Goliath (Boston) made it to Sunday’s final game, which Boston won.

ESPN carried the action live, which was a good thing since there were about 18 people who braved the inclement weather in the stands. At least the TV coverage gave some exposure to the sport that combines the best aspects of wrestling, soccer, and hockey into one fast paced, high scoring game.

#1 The Little League World Series
International matchups, good sportsmanship, civilized behavior from the fans, and the athletes of the future today – what’s not to like about the Little League World Series? Last year’s winner, Japan, made it back to the final game again this year, but California proved too much for them in a rain-rescheduled championship game on Sunday.  USA!   USA!