Sweet merciful crap that was a good sports weekend. In college football, six teams in the top 25 lost their games. The Red Sox, Rockies, and Diamondbacks all clinched playoff births, and we are counting the days until the end of Joe Torre’s tenure in New York. And for anyone who’s saying that Torre is getting a bad rap, you have absolutely no base to make that argument. Why do I say this? Well, because the head coach of the New Zealand All-Blacks may have lost his job over one game… one friggin’ game.

New Zealand coach Graham Henry will be replaced by the end of the year after the All Blacks were knocked out of the World Cup by France on Saturday.

“We will have a new All Blacks coach in place by Christmas,” New Zealand Rugby Football Union chairman Jock Hobbs told a news conference on Sunday.

Hobbs said an independent inquiry would be set up to investigate New Zealand’s failure to advance past the quarter-finals for the first time.

You think American culture is sports crazed? We have coaches being fired for not advancing in the playoffs for years in a row. We have independent inquiries looking into steroids and other major controversies. In New Zealand they fire a coach for a team’s performance in one game and set up an inquiry to look into one… 1… loss.

Man, we certainly have something to learn about being a sport-crazed nation.

• New Zealand to name new coach (The Star Online)