Don’t know if you caught Sam and I debating on our first live FACEOFF video chat yesterday, but if you want to catch the replay, click here or go to LoHud.com. We hope to be doing that at least every other week, if not more often, depending on how it’s received. We sure touched all topics and took a bunch of questions … sort of like talk radio, except we don’t hang up on anybody.

PS, as I write this, I’m watching the Red Sox, down 7-0, score eight runs in the last three innings to win and stay alive, and remembering that Sam predicted a Boston comeback to win the ALCS on our show. Gutty call. We’ll see. I still want to see how they’re going to get by in Games 6 and 7 in St. Pete with Josh Beckett obviously hurting and Jon Lester suddenly so vulnerable

Anyway, Sam’s certainly a buddy and a colleague, and he was terrific on the video chat … but I’m still going at him with anger in the football picks. He beat me again last week, going 9-5 to my 8-6. Hey, I had a winning week, so leave me alone, after those two horrible previous weeks.

Sam leads by five games, 45-40-3 to my 40-45-3, but there’s plenty of time left. As the locals take on the Bay Area this weekend, I’m looking for a big rebound by Big Blue, even in a short week, and I’ll be very interested to see how the Jets deal with their decent start as they go to the Black Hole to play a really terrible opponent. Here we go.

WEEK 7

GIANTS (-10 1/2) over 49ers
Jets (-3) over RAIDERS
Titans (-8) over CHIEFS
BILLS (pick) over Chargers
Steelers (-9 1/2) over BENGALS
Ravens (+3) over DOLPHINS
Cowboys (-7) over RAMS
BEARS (-3) over Vikings
PANTHERS (-3) over Saints
TEXANS (-9) over Lions
REDSKINS (-7) over Browns
PACKERS (+1 1/2) over Colts
BUCS (-10 1/2) over Seahawks
PATRIOTS (-3) over Broncos

2:45 p.m., Saturday, Sam says:

Although my professional reporting background was primarily in baseball, you obviously wouldn’t be able to tell it from the predictions I offered before the playoffs began (Thanks, Los Angeles Angels of Not-Even-Showing-Up). That said, I did, in fact, predict the Red Sox would come back against the Rays on our first FACEOFF LIVE; if they force a Game 7 with a win tonight, I’ll take that as a good sign for my NFL picks tomorrow.

And with that, on to the magic….

GIANTS (-10 1/2) over 49ers
Jets (-3) over RAIDERS
CHIEFS (+8) over Titans
BILLS (pick) over Chargers
Steelers (-9 1/2) over BENGALS
DOLPHINS (-3) over Ravens
RAMS (+7) over Cowboys
BEARS (-3) over Vikings

Saints (+3) over PANTHERS
TEXANS (-9) over Lions
Browns (+7) over REDSKINS
PACKERS (+1 1/2) over Colts
Seahawks (+10 1/2) over BUCS
Broncos (+3) over PATRIOTS

Sam and I are going to do our first live video chat today at 1 p.m. You can watch, you can submit questions. So please join us at LoHud.com. And if you can’t get free at 1, you can watch it at your leisure later.

We’ll probably touch ‘em all … the baseball playoffs, the Mets, Yankees, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Rangers … whatever.

I’m thinking, by the way, that Hank Steinbrenner just about jumped off his couch in joy when Matt Stairs hit that homer off Joe Torre’s reliever the other night. And that Son of Stein will be clenching his fist (not fists, because the other one has his smoke in it) rooting for the Rays tonight.

The score got national headlines. A high school football game in Florida ended up 91-0.

And once again, we’re left to ask the question, when is it too much? If the coach had stopped it at 70-0, would that have been acceptable? Or 50-0?

We all know that it should never get to 91-0, but how do you prevent a game that lopsided from getting out of hand? There’s no way it’s going to be 36-0 if one team can basically score every time it has the ball, even if it doesn’t throw, doesn’t go for it on fourth downs, puts in its second and third strings.

My basic rule of thumb in terms of not running up the score is this: If you’re thinking maybe you ought to take a knee, then taking a knee is the right thing to do. But you can’t start taking a knee in the second or third quarters. You can’t tell the third stringers to run out of bounds instead of scoring when they take a simple off-tackle handoff and break it over and over again.

But the coach on the winning side of these blowouts MUST not throw, MUST do everything he can to keep the score as reasonable as possible. Sometimes that’s 70. Sometimes that’s 50. I can’t  imagine that scoring 91 couldn’t have been avoided. I didn’t see the game, don’t know the details, have no idea how good one team is and how bad the other. I just know, from here, that there had to have been a way to keep it lower. How much lower? No idea, again.

There is another side to this. The coaches, athletic directors, principals, superintendents and other educators and officials should have some sort of idea that something like 91-0 could occur if Team A plays Team B. And they should do whatever they can to avoid having that matchup. Because 91-0 doesn’t do any good for anybody involved. It is just a complete waste of everybody’s time, of two schools’ moneys, and you throw in the risk of injuries and, well, this game has to come off the schedule before it happens.

That’s what the New York Post called David Ortiz in a headline this morning.

Certainly, Papi’s excruciating ALCS and entire postseason aren’t to blame for Josh Beckett and Jon Lester getting lit up like they were members of the Mets’ bullpen.

Nevertheless, Ortiz is 0-for-10 in the ALCS—a place where he used to shine—and 4-for-27 (.148) in the postseason. I know he had a hand/wrist injury that kept him sidelined for a long stretch and severely hampered him when he came back late in the season. But I’m also wondering how much of Ortiz’s woes have to do with the absence of his protector, Manny Ramirez.

Because as nice a job as Jason Bay has done as Manny’s replacement, no opponent fears Bay. And you just know for all those years in Boston, nobody was walking or pitching around Ortiz, no matter how hot he was, or how dangerous in a big spot, simply because Ramirez was batting behind him. And Ramirez keeps managers and pitchers up at night.

My week wasn’t as bad as, say, the Cubs’ week or the Angels’ week.

But it was a third straight putrid picking performance, bad enough that Sam beat me with his own mediocre 6-6-2 record. I was 5-7-2. Oh, well. At least I picked three of the four baseball division series correctly and my Red Sox-over-Dodgers in 7 World Series pick is still alive. Sam picked two of four, and he had Angels over Cubs in the World Series.

Not that I enjoy picking on Sam (who holds the season lead at 36-35-3 vs. my wretched 32-39-3).

The local NFLers have an interesting week against the Ohios. Can the Jets beat the winless Criminals and do so convincingly? Will the Giants put a Seattle-type beating on awful Cleveland, or will they have a repeat of their own Cincinnati close call? If they want to be called the best—and they sure do—they can’t squeak this one out.

WEEK 6

JETS (-5 1/2) over Bengals
SAINTS (-7) over Raiders
COLTS (-4) over Ravens
Panthers (+1 1/2) over BUCS
VIKINGS (-13) over Lions
FALCONS (+3) over Bears
Dolphins (+3) over TEXANS
Rams (+13 1/2) over REDSKINS
BRONCOS (-3 1/2) over Jaguars
Eagles (-5) over 49ERS
Cowboys (-5) over CARDINALS
Packers (+2) over SEAHAWKS
Patriots (+5) over CHARGERS
Giants (-7 1/2) over BROWNS

2:45 p.m., Sam says:

So, as evidenced, baseball wasn’t necessarily my best area in terms of predictions. My apologies. I think I peaked in that area when I was one of the only people in New York (or the rest of the world?) to pick the Marlins over the Yankees in the 2003 World Series. Don’t ask my why I made that pick, but it just felt right; thanks to Jeff Weaver, it turned out to be spot-on.

Anyway, I count a 6-6-2 week as pretty decent; they say anything at .500 or better is solid in this game, but I’m optimistic I can push even further ahead. Can I get 8 correct picks this week? Let’s see …

JETS (-5 1/2) over Bengals
SAINTS (-7) over Raiders
COLTS (-4) over Ravens
BUCS (-1 1/2) over Panthers
VIKINGS (-13) over Lions
FALCONS (+3) over Bears
TEXANS (-3) over Dolphins
Rams (+13 1/2) over REDSKINS
Jaguars (+3 1/2) over Broncos
Eagles (-5) over 49ERS
Cowboys (-5) over CARDINALS
SEAHAWKS (-2) over Packers
Patriots (+5) over CHARGERS
BROWNS (+7 1/2) over Giants

Generally speaking, and by a loose rule, sportswriters don’t root for teams or players or outcomes. But that’s been more loose lately, as now journalists are coming out of their closets as fans of this team or that.

Anyway, the point is, even if you are non-biased toward one team or another, sometimes you do hope to see something occur, and that’s the case for me this week. I love baseball, I love the World Series, and no matter who’s in it, I’ll be happy.

But I really hope it’s a Dodgers-Red Sox World Series. I really hope so because I think Hank Steinbrenner’s head might explode. But also because Joe Torre and Terry Francona are two of the great gentlemen and managers of men in sports, if not sports history.

(Oh. I also predicted a Sox-Dodgers World Series—Boston in 7—at the start of the playoffs. See below)

Plus I think that Series would have a lot more juice, on both coasts, too, than Phillies-Rays.

Any thoughts?

So word comes now (via my buddy Mark Feinsand at the Daily News) that the Yankees have decided to cancel the planned November concert/event/ceremony that was going to be the final goodbye to Yankee Stadium. Ostensibly, the dismantling of the Stadium will begin shortly.

My initial reaction was that this is a good thing. A baseball stadium should end with a baseball game, and that’s what the Yanks had on Sept. 21 when they beat the Baltimore Orioles in their home finale.  Going out with a win (albeit a meaningless one in this year’s standings) should be as good as you can do for a storied old ballpark.

A concert would have been weird. As strange (and creepy) as it was to see random people “standing in” for deceased Yankee legends like they did during the pregame ceremony, it would have been stranger still for Jay-Z or Beyonce or even Bruce Springsteen (sorry, PeteAbe) to be one of the last folks out of Yankee Stadium. It just would have.

The one thing that is unfortunate about this turn of events is that Joe Torre now will never get the proper ovation he deserved from Yankee fans at the Stadium. The team pettily and crassly left him out of their ceremony on the 21st but it was expected that he would have been at the November event, where he could have heard cheers for what he did for the team one last time. Now that won’t happen.

It’s a shame, for sure. In the end though, it’s hard to argue that the best goodbye to the Stadium is a baseball game.

CARP SAYS:

Sam, you and I are starting to agree too much. Seriously, I didn’t want some concert or celebrity show closing the stadium. I was depressed enough when I went to the Brian Cashman re-signing press conference at the stadium last week, because I thought I had walked out of that place forever, and with the great memories of the ceremony and the way Derek Jeter led the post-game celebration.

Plus, I heard that the November program was going to be by invitation only. If that’s not true, then it was surely going to be a money-grab. And you’d get all the front-runner fans like Mayor Bloomberg and Spike Lee and Richard Gere and all those people who were there for the all-star game and there Sept. 21 and would have been there for the postseason, but would never be there for a July game against Texas.

The place ic closed. The real fans have said their goodbyes. So be it.

Plaxico Burress is a great player, a great wide receiver, a great pass-catcher. No doubt about it. But the way he’s handled himself the past few weeks has left a lot of people (rightly) wondering what kind of teammate he is.

I’m not going to sit here and say I know what kind of “emergency” Burress was dealing with the day he didn’t show up at Giants practice and didn’t call anyone to say he wasn’t coming. Burress doesn’t want to give details about the situation and that’s his right. He says he had a responsibility to his family that day and put them first. Fine.

But Burress also has a responsibility to his team, and his teammates, and in his first comments since rejoining the Giants following a two-week suspension for insubordination, Burress was hardly repentant. He basically said he’d do the same thing again if the situation arose, and essentially said he listens to what Tom Coughlin says to him but is often not on the same page. He conceded that he has trouble handling team rules (like, say, being places on time) but said that when it comes time to play, he’s ready.

Now, I’m not a particularly devout Giants fan so I can’t speak to whether this attitude offends my sensibilities in that regard, but it does bother me as—- well, as a human being. It just seems unnecessarily confrontational and foolish. You talk about having a responsibility to be a good father/family man but you can’t make it to a meeting on time? Or respect a team leader? How is that responsible?

The Giants did the right thing suspending Burress. It was absolutely the correct decision. But you get the feeling these problems with Burress will always be an issue, and I guess that’s a tradeoff you make when you accept his talent. I’m just not sure it’s a trade I’d be willing to make if I were the one running the team.

Would you?

CARP SAYS:

Plaxico Burress = Manny Ramirez. Only Manny’s going to the Hall of Fame.

It came out during Burress’s suspension that he has been fined dozens of times, maybe 30 or 40, for various  team infractions in the short time he’s been here. So it’s actually surprising that an old disciplinarian like Tom Coughlin hasn’t suspended him before. And it’s shocking that the Giants, knowing this, let him talk his way into a renegotiation of his current contract. I’m always against renegotiation of contracts, anyway, but you definitely don’t give a problematic guy $11 million up front. Geez, that just fills up his “fine jar” and gives him more ammo, and more incentive, to be a bad teammate and a rule-breaker.

Does it bug you that you have to pay PSLs and this guy is walking around spitting out thousands of your dollars in fines?

They are Super Bowl champs, of course, so you don’t judge the New York Football Giants until all is said and done in February.

That said, the Giants are far better now than they were at this point last year, and even though they’ve played nobody—except Washington, which was made to look pathetic by the Giants, then went out and won four in a row, including victories over the Eagles and Cowboys—the Giants have been awfully impressive.

Right now, they are the best team in football, and the reasons are many: Their quarterback, their collection of running backs, the deepest receiving corps in the NFL, and the best defensive line, bar none. But one group that gets lost is the offensive line, which was on display yesterday when the Giants scored in a multitude of ways on each of their first six possessions against Seattle. The Seahawks pretty much admitted to being manhandled up front, and Brandon Jacobs called the Giants O-line the best in football.

I wrote a column for The Journal News and LoHud.com about the OL today, and you can see it here.

Simple as this: When you control both lines, you can dictate any game against any opponent. Nobody will clamp down on the Giants’ D-line this year. And it’s hard to imagine any team beating the Giants’ O-line. And that means the Giants will have their way most of the time. That means Eli Manning will have free reign to run whatever he wants to do on offense (Seattle put eight in the box to try to stop the run, and got killed by both the run and the pass).

What do you think?

Or should that be, “Would you want Manny being Manny?”

I know, I know. The guy is aloof. He has a short attention span. He dogs it on the bases sometimes, and can be a nightmare on routine plays in the field. He shoved an old man who works for the Red Sox over some ticket mixup. He quit on his team.

But he hits and hits and hits and these last five years or so, he’s won and won and won.

So would you want Manny on the Yankees or the Mets? I mean, seriously, is he any more of an off-field distraction than A-Rod? Because he hits the same as A-Rod during the season, and a lot more in the postseason.

Although he probably wouldn’t desperately want to come to the Yankees—where he’d need a severe haircut and shave, and where Joe Girardi’s head would probably explode on a regular basis—certainly he’s going to end up where the most money is. And certainly the Yankees could use a bat in their outfield, even if it is an old bat that threatens to look much older by the time he’s done with the long-term contract he’s sure to demand.

But you look at Manny’s numbers, especially this year. After joining the Dodgers, Ramirez hit .396 with 17 homers and 53 RBI in 53 games. In the first-round sweep of the Cubs, he was 5-for-10 with two homers, five runs, three ribbies and was intentionally walked twice in the last game. Did you see him score on that double in Game 3? Did you see the enthusiasm he brought to the team with his slide and jump-up celebration?

I don’t know if the Yankees would really pursue him, if they are going to want to add another A-Rod-sized contract when they have made it clear they are pursuing pitching. I do know it would be a nice tweak to the Red Sox to bring Manny to their house nine times a season.

I think the Mets will chase him, especially since Omar Minaya has always been infatuated with him. But will the Wilpons go deep enough into their wallets to get him, especially since they, too, need pitching, especially relief pitching?

It’s an interesting question, I think. If I were managing, I probably wouldn’t want to deal with Manny being Manny. If I were managing, though, I’d want the most dangerous right-handed hitter of his era (and that includes A-Rod and Albert Pujols) in my lineup. Would you?