Who am I? Why am I here?

There's no better way to start a blog than with a James Stockdale reference.

Basically, I'm here because all of the teams I root for are annoying me, not just for their performance but also because those responsible for said performance continue to hold their jobs. To wit:

The Cubs have the third highest payroll in baseball, thanks mostly to the general manager's tendency to hand out ridiculous multi-year contracts to undeserving players, yet they don't have a single player who truly deserved to play in this year's All-Star game. Despite this, he still has a job and apparently will continue to have a job.

The Bears have missed the playoffs three straight years since playing in the Super Bowl, with a Head Coach who is supposedly a defensive specialist. However, his team last year finished in the bottom half of the NFL is points allowed per game, and yet he (and the GM who assembled the hash of a roster) both got to keep their jobs.

The Head Coach of Illinois's football team has had one winning record in five seasons. He's supposed to be a great recruiter but a lousy game coach, and now recruiting is starting to lag, so we'll be relying on his lousy game coaching to improve. Good luck with that.

The Illinois basketball team is in a rut not seen in the last 30 years. During the 64-team NCAA Tournament era, the team had never gone 4 years without winning a tournament game (until now), and the only time the team missed the tournament 2 out of 3 years was due to probation (until now). Our coach (whoa - I mean, our coach) seems to have fixed his recruiting problems, things should improve from here (i.e. - Weber should at the very least be able to finally win an NCAA tournament game without relying on players recruited by his predecessor). This may be the only place where there's hope for one of my teams.

Also, I'm not really much of a Bulls fan anymore, but I used to be a fan during the Jordan years, and this residual fandom probably explains why Kyle Korver and Carlos Boozer are in Chicago instead of LeBron James and Chris Bosh.

So in answer to the question that started this whole thing off, I'm a frustrated fan, and I'll be using this forum to blow off steam while all of my favorite teams* flounder around. I hope anyone who finds this blog enjoys what I've written.

*To all the Blackhawks fans out there - I've never been a real fan, so you can thank me for the Stanley Cup. And to the White Sox fans, you've never properly thanked me for 2005 and your team's surge into first place this year. But you're welcome anyway.