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Philly Top Five Power Rankings: The Buy Or Sell Mania Edition

By Spike Eskin

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – The Philly Top Five Power Rankings this week are about hellos and goodbyes. Andrew Bynum says goodbye, the Phillies could be saying hello or goodbye, the Flyers welcome a few, and we just can't say goodbye to Donovan McNabb.

5. Winning A Stanley Cup Is Hard

The Flyers welcomed three new players this week (one of them who has been there before). From afar, it sort of seems like they're caught between a rebuild and thinking they're close enough to add a few pieces to win the Stanley Cup. It was clear, given the moves, that the team thinks they're much closer to the latter.

Ed Snider spoke to the WIP Morning Show and sounded excited about the moves, but also said that he didn't think winning another Stanley Cup would be "this hard."

It sort of seems logical that if you win two Cups rather quickly, that you might think the whole thing is easy. But you'd think it would take fewer than 40 years to realize that it's more difficult than you thought it would be.

4. Scott O'Neil Replaces Adam Aron

Congratulations to Adam Aron, who says he got a promotion as he exits the CEO position with the Sixers to head up some new investment opportunities for the owners of the team. It reminds me of that time I got a promotion from 94WYSP in September of 2011. I went from going to work every day to catching up on all of Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

As Aron moves on, we get Scott O'Neil, a well respected, well dressed, up-and-coming fella who once ran MSG Sports. I'm not sure of Scott is taking suggestions yet for game-day promotions for the team, but if he is, I'd like to offer my idea of "become a millionaire if the Sixers score 75 points night." It's sort of like a half-court shot for $10,000, except it will never happen.

3. Lito Sheppard Says Donovan McNabb Thew Up In The Super Bowl

Do I want this topic to die? Yes. Without question.

Do I need to know if it happened? Yes. Without question.

But I've got to say, at some point during the decade of discussions we've had about it, part of me has decided that I need to know if it actually happened or not. Does it matter? No, not really. But once something happened and is done with, there are few things that actually do matter. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter whether they actually won the Super Bowl or not.

I don't believe that Sheppard's proclamation is the  be-all-end-all to the discussion. I think only tape will solve that. And lord knows that might not even be enough for Angelo.

2. Farewell Andrew Bynum

I have already written too many words, and shed too many tears over the reign of terror Bynum and his knees had over Sixers land for nearly a year. It's clear though that his injury problems were enough to cost the guy potentially a hundred million dollars, and he's got to live in Cleveland. So no matter how bummed we are that he never played here, I think he's probably more bummed.

1. Phillies Buy Or Sell Mania

The Phillies won, they're buyers!

The Phillies lost, they're sellers!

Three more weeks of this!

Let me tell you a story about young Brian. Brian collected pogs. Now even though Brian was only ten years-old, he could see that the future of the pog market, at least long-term, was not bright. Eventually the next fad would take over, and his pogs would be worth nothing. Here was the problem though, he thought there might be one final run on pogs before they lost all their value. And he was thinking maybe, just maybe, he should hold on to those pogs and make that one last bit of cash.

Brian thought about this for a while, and finally decided he should just cash his pogs in now, and not risk it. That the chances that there would be that final run on pogs wasn't enough.

Brian went to the collectible store, and placed his pogs on the table for the store owner to see. "I want to sell my pog collection to you, store owner," Brian said to the store owner.

The owner chuckled, as he looked through Brian's collection. "Well some of these would have been worth something if you sold them to me last year. But most of them weren't worth much in the first place. I'll give you ten bucks."

Whoops.

Honorable Mentions: I didn't know Scottish people were also British, Donovan McNabb trashes Matt Stafford's contract, and finally Fred Shero gets into the Hall Of Fame.

Follow Spike on Twitter @SpikeEskin

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