Royals Sign Zack Greinke

The Royals announced today that they signed Zack Greinke to a 4 year contract. He'll make $38 million over the life of the contract, backloaded (3.75, 7.25, 13.5, 13.5) so he'll get Jose Guillen's money when that ridiculous deal finally runs its course.

This is a great, great signing for the Royals. The national media hasn't totally figured it out yet (since he doesn't play for New York or Boston), but his stuff is electric and he's showing flashes of being a true top-of-the-rotation guy, a fringe top 10 pitcher in all of baseball. Stealing a little bit from Rany, Greinke's market value was probably around 4 years for $44 million, with a hope that he might take a million per less than that to stay in a relatively comfortable media market like Kansas City. The Royals have beaten that and structured the contract in a way that makes a ton of sense for the organization.

Conference Championship Sunday

Philadelphia -3 1/2 Arizona - Tough to lay points on the road in a game like this, but I just can't see the Cardinals going to the Super Bowl. I like them, and will be rooting for them even though I'm betting against them, but I'm not sure Anquan Boldin is healthy. Defenses have been huge this year, with the teams that finished 1-2-3 in the regular season all still alive. The Cardinals are the odd man out and will have trouble dealing with McNabb, Westbrook, and all the blitzing that the Eagles will do.

Lean:

Baltimore +6

The correct play, given where the numbers are at, is probably a PHI +2 1/2/BAL +12 teaser.

College Hoops - 1.17.2009

Florida State / Maryland UNDER 132 - Both teams go long spells struggling to score and the Seminoles are legitimately good defensively. The UNDER is 11-1 in games involving one of these teams on the season.

Texas -6 Texas Tech - The Longhorns are probably a little bit over-rated, but they should play well today after the discouraging loss at OU on Big Monday. Tech just really isn't very good, especially defensively, which will let UT score some points. And Texas can guard, so the Red Raiders will have a difficult time keeping pace. Texas has covered 3 straight in this series.

Kansas State +2 1/2 Nebraska - K-State opened up Big 12 play with Oklahoma at home and Kansas in Lawrence. The schedule softens up a bit today and coming off a gutsy, but not great, performance against the Jayhawks...they should be poised to play well today.

Format Change

The Football Edge is changing names to The Sporting Edge. It's also undergoing a format change. This will not be unlike that dark day in the 90s when the LAZER started playing Britney Spears songs, and for that, I apologize in advance. I'll be expanding to including basketball investing, as well as writing about teams I care about in the non-oddsmaking sense. So, if a team that I follow does something stupid (like giving Larry Johnson $60 million or signing Willie Bloomquist for more than a bag of baseballs), I'll probably write about it. Some of you that don't like baseball, and I won't name any names here, will probably want to set up a filter to automatically delete updates with "Royals" in the title. If you're not a Kansas fan, they'll be plenty of that that you don't want to read. So, really...I'll have roughly one reader that follows all the teams I'll talk about. But ultimately, it's my blog...so you'll learn to deal with it.

Enjoy.