Yankees, Red Sox. Red Sox, Yankees. Ho-hum.

Check out the 2007 World Series futures market. It’s the same old song and dance – New York and Boston are the co-favorites at 7-2. For a couple of teams with serious questions in their pitching rotations, those are lousy odds.

The Yankees, of course, have the biggest payroll in the majors and a batting order that rivals anything ever assembled. But after Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte, where is the pitching going to come from? It might have to be later in the season, in the form of ageless free agent Roger Clemens and minor-league prospect Philip Hughes. The margin of error there is too big to generate confidence in handicappers.

As for the Red Sox, they appear to have a winner in Daisuke Matsuzaka. But their quest for a closer was so futile, they decided to put Jonathan Papelbon back in that role, weakening their rotation in the process. Health issues will always be a concern with the likes of Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett; for that matter, you could say the same for half the team.

There are plenty of familiar teams getting short odds for the championship – possibly none less deserving than the Chicago White Sox at 9-1. The Pale Hose are my favorite candidate for Meltdown of the Year. Their pitching is nowhere near as good as their 2005 World Series team, and it should be just a matter of time before the futility of manager Ozzie Guillen’s “small ball” tactics are finally realized on a larger scale.

If these teams aren’t going to the Fall Classic, who is? The value is in the dark horses, and I’m looking at the Arizona Diamondbacks (30-1) to face the Cleveland Indians (13-1). Cleveland doesn’t have as much value as I would have hoped after last year’s 78-84 finish, but Arizona looks quite tasty with plenty of upside and a relatively easy NL West to conquer. Plus, Randy Johnson is back where he belongs – well, that would be Seattle, but you get the idea.

If you haven’t been enjoying this year’s version of March Madness, you just don’t like basketball.

Or maybe you’re a Duke fan. If there’s been one major disappointment at the 2007 NCAA men’s basketball Tournament, it came in the first round when the No. 6 Blue Devils were turfed by the No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth Rams by a final count of 79-77. VCU was a 6-point underdog, so it wasn’t a huge upset by any stretch of the imagination. But to see Duke fail to make the Sweet 16 for the first time in a decade was still jarring.

Granted, there are plenty of lifelong Duke haters out there who were elated instead of disappointed at the Devils’ misfortune. Perhaps they’re the type who always root for the underdog; too bad, because this has been a historically chalky Tournament. VCU and Winthrop, both 11-seeds, were the closest things to a Cinderella story we had this year. And both were shown the door in the second round.

Disappointing for the storyline-starved press, you betcha. For the rest of us who actually care about the quality of play, the later rounds have been some of the best basketball you’ll ever see. But it comes at a price. With so many great teams making the Sweet 16, it was inevitable that some of the title contenders would fail to make it to Atlanta. The No. 1 Kansas Jayhawks and the No. 1 North Carolina Tar Heels both bowed out in the Elite Eight. Fans of those two clubs have to chew on that all summer long.

Finally, for those intrepid handicappers on the Strip, watching the No. 7 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels get torched in the Sweet 16 by Tajuan Porter and the No. 3 Oregon Ducks (who were laying three points) was a kick in the gut. UNLV was handed a ridiculously bad seed, won in each of the previous two rounds as the underdog, and would have matched up well against the defending champion Florida Gators in the next round. But when Porter hits eight 3-point attempts, what’s a Rebel to do?

Now that was a hell of a game.

The 3-point shot is the great equalizer in basketball – particularly at the college level, and the No. 5 Tennessee Volunteers proved it by draining 16 of them on 31 attempts Thursday night against the No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes.

But the Buckeyes still won. At the buzzer, Greg Oden went up the elevator and came up with a signature block on Ramar Smith to secure an 85-84 victory and a trip to the Elite Eight. It’s not the script OSU fans would have written; the Buckeyes, coming into this matchup only as 4.5-point faves, had to come back from 20 points down to beat Tennessee. And this is the top-ranked team in the nation?

Keep those rotten tomatoes for another day. The Buckeyes showed the heart of a champion against the Vols. Oden may have made the highlight reel with that last-second block, but he was mostly a non-factor in this game, limited by foul trouble to nine points and three rebounds. Yes, Ohio State can win a big game without Oden.

Believe it or not, it should only get easier from here. The Buckeyes will almost certainly be spared the kind of 3-point pummeling they took from Tennessee; the No. 2 Memphis Tigers are up next, and their brand of basketball is much more physical. Just ask the Texas A&M Aggies, who traded blows with Memphis all night long before finally coming up short. Another bruising affair should follow at the Final Four against No. 2 Georgetown.

These are the kind of conditions Oden thrives in. He simply has no equal in college at the center position, which is why NBA scouts have been falling over themselves all year to get a look at the 7-foot behemoth. Imagine how good he’ll be when his right wrist fully heals.

Make your Final Four picks here.

Why does everyone have such a hate-on for the Tar Heels?

North Carolina is being singled out as the most likely No. 1 seed to take an early shower at the NCAA men’s basketball Tournament. Fair enough; as talented as the Tar Heels are, they’re still young. They get caught napping every once in a while – maybe it’s the Ambien.

But I come to praise the Heels, not bury them. North Carolina was supposed to be in a rebuilding mode last year after the team got strip-mined by the NBA draft. All the frosh-laden Tar Heels did was go 21-6 straight up (18-7 against the spread) during the regular season before falling prey to those pesky George Mason Patriots at the big dance. Even the densest pack of “student-athletes” would learn a thing or two from that experience; North Carolina’s 20-13 ATS record this year would suggest they’re on a steep learning curve.

Apparently the Heels are made of Adamantium, because handicappers are lining up to lay their hard-earned cash on the No. 5 USC Trojans when they face UNC on Friday night. Ex-squeeze me? It’s one thing to beat a Texas team that was playing well above expectations – how good would Kevin Durant look in, say, whatever uniforms the Seattle Supersonics will wear next year – but chopping down those North Carolina hickories is another matter. The Heels enjoy the third-best rebounding margin in college at plus-8.5, even higher than fellow No. 1 seeds Florida (8.4) and Kansas (7.8).

I’m going to blame the Texas upset and UNC’s status as an 8.5-point chalk for the mad rush toward the Trojans. Otherwise, North Carolina’s combination of talent, offensive balance, depth and hunger makes them the pick of the Sweet 16 litter. OK, provided coach Roy Williams gives them a kick in the pants. All he should have to do is point at what happened to the Longhorns.

This sportsbook has all the Sweet 16 and NCAA odds.

Boring? Excuse me?

Somebody needs to explain why it’s boring to watch the very best college basketball teams play one another. That’s what we have in store during the Sweet 16 portion of the NCAA men’s Tournament; all four top seeds remain in the hunt, including the defending champion Florida Gators.

Are we in for the first repeat champions since the Duke Blue Devils pulled the trick in 1991 and 1992? Florida does have the shortest odds of the 16 survivors at 5-2, and the Gators appear to have an easier path to the Final Four than any of the other No. 1 seeds. It starts with Friday’s matchup against the plucky No. 5 Butler Bulldogs, who just don’t seem designed to handle big men like 6-foot-10 Al Horford (13.3 points, 9.8 rebounds per game) and 6-foot-11 Joakim Noah (12.1 points, 8.3 boards).

After that, things get a lot more dicey for Florida. A potential Elite Eight matchup with the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels could spell doom for the Gators. Florida point guard Taurean Green is having a lousy Tournament, shooting just 4-for-18 and committing nine turnovers to go with 14 assists. When Florida’s outside shots don’t find their mark, the team struggles to win – that 74-67 final over the Purdue Boilermakers in the second round was no cakewalk. UNLV happens to excel at perimeter defense, while sixth-man and Montreal native Joel Anthony gives the Rebels some added heft in the paint.

Get past UNLV, and look at the obstacles the Gators will have to overcome once they reach Atlanta. Can they beat Kansas, and then North Carolina? How about UCLA, and then Ohio State? Even a Big East combo of Pittsburgh and Georgetown would be hard to digest. But we’ve seen this movie before. Last year’s Gators plowed through three tough opponents in the Bruins, Hoyas and the Villanova Wildcats on the way to the title. They weren’t intimidated then, and they won’t be intimidated now.

Think the Gators will win it again this year? This site’s got your NCAA Tournament odds.

Yeah, so their football team found a way to lose the big one. But the Ohio State Buckeyes are poised to extract some sweet revenge on the basketball court.

Out on the Strip, the Buckeyes opened at 8-1 to win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Now OSU sits at 4-1 on the futures market; only the defending champion Florida Gators (5-2) and the potent North Carolina Tar Heels (3-1) are getting shorter odds to come out on top. But neither of those teams has Greg Oden. (Check out Bodog Sportsbook NCAA Tournament odds.)

Oden’s name was being whispered in the same reverent tones as LeBron James’ going into the 2006-07 season. If it weren’t for the NBA’s controversial decision to put a de facto age restriction on the league’s draft, Oden would almost certainly have been picked first overall straight out of Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis. But the Oden hype has diminished somewhat – not because the 7-foot center hasn’t been dominant for OSU; rather, there’s this kid named Kevin Durant playing for the Texas Longhorns you may have heard about.

Durant may be a freak of nature, but his Longhorns are in third place in the Big 12 standings and stuck in the field at 15-1 to win the Tournament. Oden’s Buckeyes, on the other hand, are the top-ranked team in the polls at 24-3 overall, 12-1 in Big Ten action and 14-10-1 against the spread. Think the polls are a joke? You’re not alone. Perhaps you’ll be more convinced by OSU’s No. 3 ranking on the RPI list, or their No. 5 status in the Pythagorean-based Pomeroy Ratings.

There are very good reasons to go with Florida (No. 4 Pomeroy) or North Carolina (No. 1) at the big dance. However, it takes something special to make it all the way through six Tournament contests and come out champions. For last year’s Gators, that something special was 6-foot-11 center Joakim Noah, who also could have been drafted first overall by the Toronto Raptors had he not decided to go back to school.

Oden is that much better. Noah is giving the Gators 12.7 points, eight rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 blocks in 25.5 minutes per game. That’s not too shabby. Oden? Nothing less than 15.5 points, 9.5 boards, 0.8 assists and 3.6 blocks in 29.4 minutes. As a freshman. And against tougher opponents; Ohio State is ranked No. 30 in the nation in strength of schedule, compared to No. 48 for Florida. Even better, Oden didn’t start playing until December, missing almost the entire wimpy non-conference portion of the season. Now that’s the kind of player you can ride to a championship.

Have you filled out your NCAA Tournament bracket yet? This Bracket Buster Contest has some wicked cash prizes!

Betting on the winner of the Stanley Cup over the last three seasons hasn’t been overly difficult if you actually look at the final standings. The last three Cup winners have all come from the Eastern Conference, and all three have been division winners. Carolina finished second overall in the East last year, Tampa Bay finished first overall in the East back in 2003/2004, and New Jersey finished second in the East way back in 2002/2003.

Oddly enough, the West has been the exact opposite. The Western Conference has sent low seeds to the finals over the last three seasons, including No.8 seed Edmonton last season, No. 6 Calgary in 2003/2004, and No. 7 Anaheim back in 2002/2003.

If the East maintains this trend then the safe money right now would have to be on Buffalo or New Jersey. The Sabres finished one win away from the Cup final last season and have ruled the Eastern Conference since the puck first dropped back in October. If Buffalo doesn’t make the Cup final out of the East, the Devils have to be the clear favorite. New Jersey will go as far as goaltender Martin Brodeur will take them. Brodeur has already backstopped the Devils to three Cups in his career, and at age 34, remains by far the best goalie in the league this season with 36 wins and 11 shutouts.

The West is packed with Stanley Cup contenders, but like we said earlier the West hasn’t sent a top seed to the Cup final since Detroit won in 2001-2002. The Red Wings have been near the top of the Western Conference standings all season, thanks to their outstanding record at home. Detroit hasn’t had very much luck in the playoffs since winning the Cup back in 01/02, but if they can get home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs this year that could definitely change.

The team to watch in the West could be Calgary. The Flames are sitting near the bottom of the Western playoff pack, but it didn’t seem to hurt them a few years ago when they went to the Cup final as the No. 6 seed. With Jarome Iginla healthy and the Flames’ lineup improved by some recent trades, Calgary could be a winning bet come June.

Looking to get your Stanley Cup picks in early? Check out Bodog Sportsbook.