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Turned my attention back to the Monday Night Football game just in time to watch Byron Leftwich take the helm for Pittsburgh to start the second half.

Apparently Ben Roethlisberger was still in the locker room getting treatment on a shoulder injury. Save for his long windup, Leftwich looked pretty good on that first drive, nailing Nate Washington with a 50 yard pass that led to a touchdown run by Willie Parker.

Roethlisberger has been getting the crap beaten out of him weekly. But he was hardly the only one this week.

Kyle Orton is supposed to be out a month with a high-ankle sprain for the Bears while Matt Schaub will give way to Sage Rosenfels for at least a couple weeks while he recuperates from a knee injury.

Dan Orlovsky made room on the Detroit Lions roster as well by hurting his thumb - and gave offensive coordinator Jim Colletto an opportunity to put his foot in his mouth by saying he didn’t want to “embarrass” Drew Stanton by playing him now.

That doesn’t bode well for Chicago or Houston, or for Detroit, though their season is already pretty much shot. Dallas went from one bad backup to another on Sunday and both performed so badly that Wade Phillips described Brooks Bollinger as “just another quarterback.”

Then on Monday the Cleveland Browns announced that Brady Quinn will replace Derek Anderson as starter. I don’t think Anderson has gotten a ton of help and Cleveland has played a killer schedule. The quarterback play league-wide has been underwhelming this year. Save for a half-dozen competent to great QBs you can toss most of the ham-and-eggers into a bucket and not really know the distance.

Having two quarterbacks used to be a luxury. These days, it seems, having even one might make that statement true.

According to a quick look at Google Analytics, three people viewed my best bets for week nine, the second week this segment was in play.

Hopefully those three people didn’t put much stake in those predictions - they sucked. I went oh-for-four on Sunday on those picks and eroded my Centsports.com account by nearly half its value in the process.

It just goes to show that while gambling can be fun it’s best done recreationally and not in any effort to get rich or pay off your mortgage in a hurry. The poor showing also shows just how hard it is to beat Vegas on a regular basis.

Nonetheless, I’ll not give up. I’ll be back later this week with more picks - hopefully it goes better this time.

Last week I debuted the Best Bets column, a collection of two to four games that I’ll suggest as potential money winners. While we do our weekly picks of every game I’m starting this based on the theory that there’s no way I’d ever bet on every game because most of the point spreads are actually quite accurate.

Last week I nailed the over in San Diego vs New Orleans. I had that almost hit at halftime as both teams broke 30, easily clearing the 45.5 Las Vegas line.

I also hit on the New York Giants as a 2.5 point underdog against Pittsburgh. The game was closer than I expected and the Giants almost squandered the opportunity, but in the end it was the Giants defense - and an injured long-snapper that carried the Giants to a win, both straight up and against the spread.

I missed on my expectation that the Bengals would cover the 9.5 point spread against Houston, in the process hopefully learning a valuable lesson: when a team is as bad as Cincinnati they can lose to any other team, no matter how bad, regardless of the spread.

Still, I’ll take 2-1. If you do that every week you’ll end up a winner in Vegas. This week’s spreads are a little trickier, again using the Caesar’s/Hilton line at www.vegas.com/gaming:

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After nearly two years of announcements, campaigns, primaries, caucuses, conventions and debates this year’s presidential election is a mere five days away.

It’s crunch time and we’re being bombarded with bitter, vindictive television and radio advertisements and mailings every day. As much as I care what direction our country is heading in I can’t wait until this election cycle ends - and I would have to guess I’m not alone.

But the folks at ESPN don’t seem to think we’ve had enough. Chris Berman intends to interview each candidate Monday and the network will air them during the game.

Do they really think Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama are going to cut open a vein for them? Is there really going to be something groundbreaking? Haven’t we heard enough of these candidates pandering to the sports teams in whatever city they happen to be in on any given day?

I guess I’ll just watch the game with the sound off. I think I get the Westwood One radio coverage somewhere on my radio dial.

In another example of how fantasy sports has exploded, Zoneblitz.com brings you PaperSports.com. When Rod Yancy approached Zoneblitz with information about PaperSports.com I was skeptical. He’s helped found a fantasy site that offers tournaments and prizes for drafting teams that in football compete for one week at a time. I play in five football leagues right now and it’s hard to keep up with that, much less try to participate in leagues that draft anew each week.

But we asked Yancy a few questions and as he explained the concept I began to see where a model like this might appeal to some people. Here’s a Q&A with Mr. Yancy that gives some of the rationale behind starting the site and explains more specifically how it works.

Zoneblitz: Can you describe your site, PaperSports.com, and the concept behind a short-season?”

Yancy: PaperSports games last one week for football and one day for basketball and baseball. There are several reasons why we think that the “short-season” fantasy sports format is compelling, I’ll mention a few.

First, PaperSports users can pick their fantasy team(s) and know whether they won their tournament(s) within a matter of days. This is more conducive to real money play, because you don’t have to wait a whole season to get paid if you are going to win.

Second, since games are so frequent, users can join tournaments 24/7, seven days a week. With season-long fantasy sites, if you miss the live-draft you are basically out of luck for the entire season. With short-season fantasy sports at most you are out a week. Last, users don’t have to follow the same fantasy team the whole season, so if something changes and they want to pick a new line-up, all they have to do is play a new tournament.

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