The Buck List: Two Cheers for the Windy City

Now for the latest installment of everyone's favorite top-5 list.  Chicago may be America's second city, but for at least a week it's first in the hearts of The Buck List voters . . . .  

5.  The Philadelphia Flyers.  A couple of weeks ago the Flyers nearly put former head coach John Stevens on the Buck List by firing him less than two years off of his Coach-of-the-Year resurrection of their franchise.  Now, an organization is free to Buck List its own coach whenever it wants, but if it does so a third of the way into the season, it'd be wise to make sure that its team answers the call and turns things around.  The Flyers, uh . . . haven't.  When the Flyers fired Stevens, they were 13-11-1 and were coasting a few points out of the playoffs in 10th place in the East.  Since firing Stevens, the Flyers have gone 2-7-1, have been outscored 35-18, and have plummeted to 14th in the East.  Over the past week, the Flyers cemented their ineptitude in style, stringing together a putrid four-game losing streak during which they were absolutely embarrassed 15 goals to 5.   Throw in two losses (by a combined score of 9-3) to arch rival Pittsburgh, and things officially hit bottom for Philly this week.  So, who's excited for the Winter Classic?!

4.  The Chicago Bulls.  The fellas on TV like to say that basketball is a sport of rushes—in most games the two teams will trade at least a few significant scoring runs back and forth.  But we're pretty sure they don't quite mean "keep up your guard when you have a  35 point lead with less than half a game to play  or you just might lose to a sub-.500 team at home."  No, we don't think we've ever heard that phrase, but then again we don't watch too many Bulls games.  On Monday, the Bulls gave us one of the NBA's all-time greatest collapses, tossing away a 35-point second-half lead to the visiting Scaramento Kings.  The Bulls were outscored 58-19 by the lowly Kings in the final 21 minutes of the game.  By the time the smoke had cleared on their 104-98 defeat, the Bulls had given up the largest comeback in the NBA in over a decade.  (In 1996 the Denver Nuggets threw away a 36-point lead over the Utah Jazz, but those Jazz went to the NBA finals.  These Kings . . . will not.)  To top things off, the Bulls then fell to the 11-17 New York Knicks on Tuesday.  The Bulls were probably humiliated by the ordeal, but they shouldn't take to it too harshly; we doubt their collapse caught the eye of too many Chicago sports fans—they're all too enthralled with their latest fad, the second place Blackhawks, to pay attention to the flailing Bulls.  That's so April 2009.

3.  USC Football.  Another season, another USC running back receiving illegal kickbacks for his on-field exploits.  Earlier this week it was revealed that USC starting running back Joe McKnight has been cruising around in a Land Rover bought for his girlfriend by southern California businessman, owner of "USC marketing," and certifiable whack job Scott Schencter.  Shocking revelation for a kid who wrote "I Need $$" on his eye black as a freshman.  It looks like McKnight will now be held out of the Trojans' December 26th Emerald Bowl appearance, which will find him in good company with starting tight end Anthony McCoy, starting offensive tackle Tyron Smith, and back up defensive tackle Averell Spicer, who have all been declared academically ineligible for the game.  An embarrassing situation for the program all around, but Pete Carroll has graciously shouldered the blame for these "kid[s] with issues."  Add it all up and the Trojans should be higher on the list, but we don't exactly have the greatest confidence in the NCAA's dedication to investigating USC.  Plus, the Trojans  alleviated most of the sting on their own by failing to qualify for a bowl that anyone cares about.

2.  Nick Folk.  The Dallas Cowboys have a hard enough time winning in December as it is without Nick Folk screwing things up.  But Folk—who amazingly still had a job heading into the Cowboys' game against the New Orleans Saints, despite missing 6 of his previous 10 field goal attempts—almost unilaterally sunk the Cowboys' bid to save their playoff hopes and end the Saints' undefeated season on Thursday night.  Up 24-17 with just over two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, the Cowboys had a chance to put the game away with a simple 24-yard field goal.  Instead Folk banged the chip shot off the right upright.  Somehow the 'Boys avoided their seemingly inevitable meltdown and won the game, but Folk wasn't so lucky; he was released by Dallas two days later.  Once upon a time Folk was a prime time hero for the Cowboys.  Now he leads the NFL in missed field goals, has no job, and is somehow second fiddle to Sean Suisham who was himself released two weeks ago after missing an even shorter field goal (23 yards) for the Redskins.  At least Folk can take solace in the fact that he didn't actually lose the game for Dallas and that within a month Tony Romo will have done much worse to once again solidify his status as the Cowboys' perennial goat.

1.  Jay Cutler.  This one's been a long time coming.  Since Cutler was traded from the Broncos to resurrect the Bears and their woeful offenses under Lovie Smith, it's been nothing but a steady series of failures for Jay and the gang.  But we had to put an official date on this unending Buck Listing at some point.  We'll go with today.  Sure we could have chosen last week, when the Bears were officially eliminated from the playoffs, but they actually squeezed out a win over the Rams that week, and that wouldn't have been any fun.  Or it could rightfully have been after Cutler gift-wrapped 5 interceptions for the 49ers en route to a 10-6 Bears loss in San Francisco November 12, but The Buck List was but a twinkle in our eye then.  This Sunday, however, our patience was rewarded with Cutler's worst performance of the year:  At Baltimore, Cutler was 10-27 for a whopping 97 yards, threw three interceptions, and failed to lead the Bears on a single scoring drive in their 31-7 beatdown by the Ravens.  Cutler crawled to a career-low passer rating of 7.9 and was replaced by some rookie named Caleb Hanie.  To top it all off, Cutler's disaster ensured the 5-9 Bears of a losing season in their first year under his watchful eye.  Less than six months ago, Bears fans were in a froth over Cutler's arrival and all the space they'd have to clear off of their shelves for replica Lombardi trophies.  Today, they're calling for second-year University of Delaware product Joe Flacco as the real savior they should have had.  We're usually pretty hard on the fickleness of Chicago fans (see above), but maybe we can excuse them here: their team did give up Kyle Orton, two first-round draft picks, and a third-round pick for a chubby kid who currently leads the league in interceptions and whose 5 wins have come against teams that are a combined 18-52.  Then again, no one should have ever been posting nonsense like this.

Others Receiving Votes.  Dirk Nowitzki/Carl Landry: In a mutual Buck Listing, earlier this week Dirk Nowitzki and Rockets forward Carl Landry collided so violently that bits of three of Landry's teeth were left embedded in Nowitzki's elbow.  Hard to say who got the worst of that exchange, but we'll give the edge to Dirk:  While Nowitzki writhed on the ground, Landry coolly walked off the court, and then came back a few days later to score 27 points against the Clippers; Dirk is on infection watch and could apparently be out for the season—or worse—if Landry didn't brush his teeth enough.; The MLB Luxury Tax: The Yankees were hit with a $25 million penalty this week for going over the MLB's luxury tax last season and have now accounted for $174 million out of the total $190 million luxury tax penalties assessed across the entire league since 2003.  A lot of good that seems to be doing:  The Yankees apparently couldn't care less about the tax and just traded Melky Cabrera for starting pitcher Javier Vazquez not to bolster their rotation, but just to rub their willingness to spend in everyone's faces.; Teams in the AL East not named the Yankees: See the note about Javier Vazquez above.; Jim Zorn: The Redskins fell to 4-10 after failing entirely to show up in the first half of their game against the Giants Monday night (the Giants led 24-0 at half and had held the Redskins to two first downs and 51 yards of total offense).  If Dan Snyder was inquiring into potential coaching replacements in front of Zorn's face in March, just imagine what he is willing to do now.