Fox News Channel moderators Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier provided an awkward, chatty opening unfitting for a national discussion.  However, once the rhetoric began to fly, it was clear that Fox was targeting Trump’s candidacy and using their inquiries to expose his weaknesses as a Republican candidate.  That, I can understand.  But as a Fox product, why not have the moderators ask a few questions over the course of the evening that might allow the GOP to gain some support from the undecideds.  In my opinion, the phrasing of the questions by the Fox commentators did not bolster the Republican messaging, but instead made each of them appear weaker.

Right off the bat, Trump’s reluctance to waive the possibility of a 3rd party run set the tone for the debate.  With the independent elephant in the room immediately in play, I would have liked to have seen follow-up questions directed to some of the other candidates about “party versus person” in an effort to further isolate Trump since that was the clearly Fox’s intention. Always playing a hunch, it is interesting to note that during the debate, The Donald was overtly supportive of Jeb Bush – which might be a wise hedge bet.

Not all of the candidates were asked the same questions, but each got a crack at a domestic issue and a foreign policy matter.  Using a +2 to -2 rating for each response given, here is how we scored the candidates.

All of the candidates were confronted with similar opening questions which addressed their perceived weaknesses.  Notably, the candidates did not all receive an equal number of questions: Rand Paul and Chris Christie were severely shortchanged.  Huckabee, Cruz and Christie made the most of their opportunities, while the good doctor Carson looked uneasy and did not shine among the top tier candidates.

We had Marco Rubio as the winner for the evening session, but evangelicals, Huckabee and Cruz were close behind and each of the 2nd place finishers were offered one fewer question.  Trump was surprisingly well-behaved but offered little content.  Jeb Bush did not seem excited about his messaging but he plodded along.  Kasich benefitted from the Ohio home cooking, but did not score many points with the Bench Jockeys.

We are now just over 15 months away from election night 2016.  Much can happen between now and the Iowa Caucus (2/1/16), New Hampshire Primary (2/9/16) and Super Tuesday (3/1/16).  We aim to stay on top of the 2016 election, and accordingly, our odds have been adjusted. Click here http://thebenchjockeys.com/updated-odds-for-2016-presidential-nominations/ for our updates which consider our perceptions from both the early show and the main event.

The Bench Jockeys scored and graded all of the individual responses on a +2 to a -2 scale.  (We will use the same format and assessment tool for this evening’s main course.)  Carly Fiorina was the clear winner this afternoon with a total tally of +7.  On the other side of the spectrum, Rick Perry rambled and seemed disorganized; we deemed him the lowest performer with a total score of -4.  Rick Santorum’s love of country and passion were touching (+6) but he has is long way to go.  Gilmore (+2) and Pataki (+2) did not hurt themselves, but did nothing to help them push forward either.  Bobby Jindal (+5) had the best one liner, stating, “give Bernie Sanders credit, at least he is honest enough to call himself a socialist, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are no better.”  Although advocating a widely unpopular position, soft-spoken, Lindsey Graham’s honesty about committing troops to Iraq and Syria to confront ISIS was worth noting; however, the balance of his responsive content was bland (-1).

Bottom line:  Fiorina emerges from the Loser’s Bracket as the most polished, feisty and pointed of the bottom 7.  Depending on the sound bites offered, I would expect her support to surge, but given the early viewing time, she might not convert this impressive effort into votes.

In the meantime, get your popcorn and antacids ready for tonight….

Proposition betting: Odds of seeing someone in a head-lock – 5:2.  Donald Trump exceeding his allotted time on every question – 1:5.  Jeb Bush or Scott Walker closing the gap on Trump by this time next week – 3:2.  Daily double: Odds of either John Kasich or Ben Carson being perceived as the winner this evening – 8:1.

Blinded by personal ambition while forsaking the end-game goal of the Grand Old Party, what most of the aspirants fail to recognize is that it will not be the populace who decides who will be the nominee, it will be the party.  Amos Tuck will rise from the dead before the GOP allows The Donald the honor of facing off against Hillary, Bernie or Uncle Joe.  Assuming RNC chair, Reince Priebus has learned anything from 2008 and 2012, the Republican Party will not let the intra-party backbiting continue, the field will be purposefully winnowed and the leadership will need to broker a deal with Trump so he does not give the GOP the Ross Perot 1992 skidoo.

And for those of you who love the underdog, the seven remaining Division 1-FCS candidates will also have their opportunity to shine in a lesser-viewed cage match undercard earlier on Thursday at 5PM.  This second tier candidate debate essentially becomes the de facto loser bracket in a double elimination contest.  Notably, each of the “less-than-magnificent 7″ enter this bracket saddled with one loss.  However, miracles do happen… like when 33-27 Fresno State beat Georgia in 2008 to win the College World Series or when Buster Douglas, a 42-1 long shot, KOed Iron Mike in 1990.  It happens, but PAC contributions will begin to wane without a tremendous showing on Thursday.

The Bench Jockeys will be lapping up both of the debates, hoping that there will be an automatic microphone kill switch utilized by the moderators when speaking time expires and updating our odds on Friday based upon what we see.  Click here http://thebenchjockeys.com/updated-odds-for-2016-presidential-nominations/ to see where things stand prior to Thursday’s scuffle.

What we know:   Pretty much nothing.  We did not agree on anything.  The betting lines have Mike Trout as a 1:1 favorite to take home the AL Most Valuable Player hardware, but it is interesting that none of the Jockeys see the Angels in the World Series despite the potential output of Trout, Pujols and Calhoun.  As a group, we see Felix Hernandez dominating the AL.  (Spound is still waiting for Tanaka to produce for his 2014 fantasy team, and we are not quite sure what Brittany is seeing that the rest of don’t with respect to Joe Kelly of the Red Sox.)

Ian really wanted to take a flyer on the Mariners in the Series and likes Cano as a dark horse AL MVP pick, but he couldn’t pull the trigger.  Britt and Craig both go all-in with an old skool LA-NY series and Chris and Ian both projected the same unlikely AL Champ to lose versus the pitching depth of the Nats.  And of course, the ever-diabolical Spound is rooting for the Cubbies to find their way back to the Championship just so Billy Sianis’ curse can play-out yet again…106 years and counting.

Send us your thoughts in the comment section.

We assume that the fact that Harvick’s run has surfaced on The Bench Jockeys (as well as a few other more mainstream news sites) will be the kiss of death for his streak, so we wanted to weigh-in before it was over.  Sorry Kevin : (

March 22, 2015 Update – Kevin Harvick did secure 2nd place at the Auto Club 400 to make it 8 straight Top 2 finishes in a row.  The pressure continues to mount for Harvick in a sport that greatly depends on the intentions and competence of others.

On Friday, higher seeds prevailed in 15 of the 16 matchups but even in a tournament where only 5 lower seeds emerged victorious in the 32 first round games, there is only 1 entry out the 11.57 million entries on ESPN’s Tournament Challenge that picked all 32 contests correctly.  1!  There are 38 entries that had 31 of the 32 teams picked correctly;  that’s .000328% of all ESPN’s brackets.   So when Iowa State and Baylor fell before you left the office on Thursday and you tore your office pool bracket sheet to shreds, feel some solace that you were not alone.  In fact, you might want to pull that baby out of the trashcan and tape that it back together.  As long as you didn’t have the Cyclones or Bears advancing too far, you may be still in line for a payday, because on the whole, favorites did much better than they have in recent years.  The chalk still talks going into the weekend games.

And speaking of a payout, I will leave you with this report from Vegas… Kentucky was 1:500 to beat Hampton and some schlub bet $600 on Kentucky.  The spoils of his wager… $1.20.

Q1  – Why, Father, why is this trade worse than all other trades?

One this night (or some night recently), the Jets acquired Brandon Marshall to bolster its passing game without an NFL QB. Talk about a waste of resources.  That’s like putting a Porsche engine in your Dodge Dart.  Marshall became frustrated with Cutler slinging the ball all over the field in Chicago.  Can you imagine Marshall on a fly pattern looking back to see Geno try and side-arm the rock out to Chris Ivory on 70% of his routes?  Marshall (who is also an NFL Network commentator) will certainly be able to cover a game and play in it at the same time.  64 Catches/709 yards….

Q2 – Why is the Jimmy Graham trade worse than the previous trade?

One this night, the second best team in football acquired the league’s second best tight end in Jimmy Graham.  Something is very wrong when a team is allowed to trade one of the best offensive players in the game for back-end draft picks.  The NFL cap is forcing teams to make idiotic trades and drop fan favorites; it is both ugly and insulting to the fan base.  At least Pete Carroll will have a reasonable excuse to throw it from the 1 yard line next year.

Q3 – Why is the deflate-gate investigation worse than all other cheating investigations?   

Does one get the feeling the NFL is holding the release of any written report on the deflated footballs until a time that nobody cares.  I fully expected an indecisive report to surface with 8 minutes left on the clock before Tampa’s first pick.  The report will only be leaked prior to that time if the NFL has anything on the Patriots other than a ball boy relieving air from 11 footballs in under 90 seconds instead of his bladder.

Q4 – Why on this night are you allowed to tamper but on all other nights you cannot?  

Because, my child, on this night, it’s called legal tampering.  Is this the tamperer’s reward for finding the afikomen?  Has this particular NFL period existed before?  Apparently, now you can talk to a free agent but you can’t make any monetary overtures.  What exactly did Dolphins owner Steven Ross and Ndamukong Suh talk about?  Unless you were living under a rock, you certainly knew the Dolphins were going to throw an obscene amount of money at Suh… Glad that the entire NFL universe was able to work out the particulars of the deal prior to the end of the legal tampering period, because if they followed the NFL’s rules, Ross and Suh were likely discussing the Real Housewives of Miami…356 pounds of girth changes hands and teams – clearly against the rules – without any backlash, but 1 pound of air leaves a football on a cold night and it makes international news… Roger’s Salary should be lowered to $30 Million tops next year.

What we discovered was the Harrisons have a long way to go to crack the Top 100, let alone the Top 20 that we have digested and analyzed for your consideration herein.  This was way more difficult to quantify than one would think.  There were  many siblings that did not sniff our list but were remarkable for their achievements.  A few of the particularly noteworthy are highlighted below.

For example, we all know that Jackie Robinson was arguably the best second baseman of all time, but did you know that Jackie’s older brother, Matthew “Mack” Robinson, earned a Silver Medal in the 1936 Olympics in Munich.  He finished 2nd by 0.4 seconds to none other than Jessie Owens.

We knew that we could not ignore the most popular sport on earth – soccer – but the Charlton brothers finished on the outside looking in. Who were they you ask?  Sir Bobby and twin brother, Jack, won the 1966 World Cup for England.  Jack was FWA Footballer of the year in 1967; won 2 Fairs Cups; a league title and FA Cup.  Sir Bobby survived a tragic air crash in Munich in 1958 that killed many of his Manchester United teammates. He went onto play over 600 games for ManU, with a goals per game average of an incredible .328 while hauling in an array of individual honors.

Here’s a fact that might win a few bar bets for you:  Both Marat Safin and his sister, Dinara, are the only brother-sister tandem to achieve a world number 1 pro tennis ranking – Matt in 2000, Dinara in 2009.  We suspect that you might have an inkling about the tennis sibs who did make our Top 20, however.

Lastly, before we move onto our rankings, we considered the array of brothers who played cricket.  The Aussies tout the Chappells of the 1970s, the Zimbabweans love the Flower twins of the 1990s and currently, the Pakistanis queue up to see the Akmals, but none of us are actually smart enough to really understand which are the best sibs – so we left them all off of the list.

And now without further adieu….let the outrage and second-guessing begin.

Why the Richards?  Over the 100 year history of the Stanley Cup and professional ice hockey, both Henri and Maurice “Rocket” Richard still both rank within the Top 25 of their sport; with The Rocket securing a spot within the Top 5 all time.  Although one could argue that Serena Williams may be one the five best women’s tennis players in history, and Venus did earn a number 1 ranking in 2002, the fact is, second-fiddle Venus is not as dominant in her sport as the lesser (just slightly lesser) Henri was in his.

We welcome your thoughts…but it won’t change our minds.

Interestingly, the term “Ma Nishtana” has taken on a new meaning as well – which also suits the snark scale at The Bench Jockeys.  According to the urban dictionary, “Ma Nishtana” now also connotes the “utter lack of surprise” to some bit of news.  For example, Dan Synder overpaid another aging retread in free agency. Ma Nishtana.  Or ESPN is reporting something about Tiger. Ma Nishtana.  Or the over-under on the NBA All-star game is 280. Ma Nishtana.  Get it?

So when the mood hits him, Spound will drop some righteous Ma Nishtana.  Enjoy this new featurette which we hope will heighten your reading pleasure.

– The Bench Jockeys

However the big story on the Republican side of the aisle was the scuttle-butt from Dr. Carson’s assertions that doing time can  change a man’s sexual orientation.  Are they teaching that now in med school?  I think they might be bringing the leeches back too.

Although quick to apologize, the content of Carson’s mea culpa was not the prescription he needed.  Consequently, we are dropping him down quite a few pegs to the third tier of possible nominees.  Reluctant to announce in the first place, the good doctor may now be rethinking the whole thing, especially as every word he utters will now be parsed by the media.

The beneficiary to Carson’s slip-up may actually be Rubio since the Carson and Rubio camps are not too far apart on many issues.  As a result, we only slightly decreased Marco’s odds in spite of the CPAC straw poll numbers.  Check out this link for the most current odds at  http://thebenchjockeys.com/?p=1556