Sideline Warning

Okay, so my blogging died an early death before The Pep Rally could really catch on. With barely over 60 days until kick-off, it’s time to give it another shot. No lie. The Pep Rally is, more-or-less, a link dump of things I found over the past week or so that didn’t merit whole posts, but deserved linkage nonetheless.

So… uh… yeah. Let’s go.

• College Football Resource :: CFR has a good update on the things the pundits are saying about the late Terry Hoeppner.
• The FanHouse :: Point-shaving in Toledo? The alleged point-shaver was cleared, but then failed to make the grade. Heh.
• Ramblin’ Racket :: All the wrecked Wreck updates you can handle. They’re awfully defensive about those pictures, aren’t they?
• The FanHouse :: You want to talk Fulmer Cup points? Just give this guy the contest. Bank robbery? Jesus.
• Fanblogs :: Michigan plans to expand The Big House — one of the most storied stadiums in college football.
• The FanHouse :: JaMarcus Russell spotted outside a club on Draftsday Eve sporting a ‘Bama Boy chain. Complete with diamond encrusted elephant. (Plug warning: I wrote the post linked to).

Apologies for the abundance of FanHouse links. They just happen to be on top of things.

This ought to be a good one. The LSU/VT match-up could be one of the best of the season and even Auburn/USF could be better than most people expect.

Game of the Week

LSU vs. Virginia Tech — The Miami/Oklahoma game is this week, too… but the contest in Baton Rouge will be a much better game. Bank on it. It might be the best non-conference game of the regular season.

Team Exposed as Not-So-Underrated After All

Auburn vs. South Florida — There’s some talk here on the internets that USF is going to be the dark horse in the Big East. I’m not buying it. Auburn is going to dismantle the Bulls.

Biggest Blow-out

Florida vs. Troy — Not much to say about this one. Troy gets Florida the week after they faced off against Arkansas. Whoever it was at Troy who scheduled this pair of games is either a practical joker or a sadist.

Morbid Curiosity

Alabama at Vanderbilt — Bad year for Alabama to catch Vandy. Nickson is better. Bennett is amazing. Saban has about the same amount of talent that Shula had last year. This is the barometer. If the Tide holds on, count on an improvement from last year. If not, it could get worse before it gets better.

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UPDATE: (7-5-2007) “Senator Blutarsky” pointed out in the comments that something seemed wrong. After looking back at the numbers, it appears that I had transposed two column headers. Previously, in the “received” column I had swapped “21-28″ and “28+” that has now been fixed in the raw numbers and in this post.

Ryan Ferguson over at The FanHouse linked to an article about blow-outs in the SEC. The first thing I noticed when I read the article over at Tracking the Tigers (an AL.com blog) was that it had some bizarre restrictions.

For starters, Marshall left out the worst teams in the conference, only looked back 5 seasons, and it seems that he looked at a coach’s last five seasons, instead of just going back five years. He also set the margin of victory (or loss, in this case) necessary to qualify for a blow-out at an astonishingly low 14 points. I’m fairly certain that I’ve never heard anyone call a 14-point win a “blow-out”. Rather than just criticize the methods, however, I decided to run some numbers of my own.

I went all the way back to 1998, looked at all of the current SEC coaches, and was mainly focused on a per-year rating rather than a raw number. I looked at wins by 21-28, 28+, and 21+. I was also curious about shut-outs, so I tossed those in as well. What follows is a far-too-long analysis, or you can jump right to the raw numbers — (I collected these automatically, so there could be some discrepancies… please let me know if you see any).

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Back in January, the University of Texas dropped its blankie and binky on the floor, tossed itself face-down on the floor, held its breath, and threw a legal temper-tantrum suitable only for the most petty and spoiled toddler. It sued a business owner in College Station for trademark infringement because the logo Aggieland Outfitters was using was too much like Texas’s longhorn logo.

Cry me a river.

It sounds more like Texas was hoping they could sue the slight to their beloved illustration right out of existence. No such luck. According to The Eagle, the suit was settled. Aggieland had to pay $25k and had to agree to change their logo.

What were the changes?

A spokesperson for Aggieland Outfitters says it best: “[Texas] spent so much money trying to work this thing out and it ultimately came down to two nostrils, a patch of forehead hair, and a little money.”

Quite a few really interesting out of conference match-ups for SEC teams on opening weekend this year.

Game of the Week

Tennessee at Cal — This is probably the biggest game in the country, and it should be a good one. Cal got whipped last year in Knoxville and they’re going to be out for blood. Two arguably top ten teams meeting out-of-conference in the first week? Excellent!

Biggest Blow-out

Kentucky vs. Eastern Kentucky — Listen, Kentucky’s offense is for real. Woodson is probably the best quarterback in the conference and Rafael Little should have no problem running the ball against the Hilltoppers Colonels (Thanks, Brodie12Tide). EKU is transitioning to D-IA, but it’s going to take a few years before they get up to speed.

Morbid Curiosity

LSU at MSU — This game will not be even remotely interesting, but any time the Bulldogs from Starkville take the field against a team that should beat them into the ground, you’ve gotta ask yourself: is this the week that someone gets Croomed?

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Last season’s blogging, as you might be able to tell, was pretty weak. I had good intentions, and things were cruising right along. And then a pretty, pretty man got in touch and asked if I’d cover Alabama football for AOL’s new blogging behemoth The FanHouse. I agreed and while I believed that I could do both, it ’twas not to be. I’m still writing over at Da Haus, but I’m hoping to bring back terribly underused blog this coming season.

For real.

I’m serious.

Starting this weekend.