Sideline Warning

Alabama fans are often accused of “living in the past”. Of course, the simple fact is that there’s nowhere else to live. Living in the present is fun, but once a game is over it’s really in the past. Living in the future is much happier, but doesn’t really impress anyone.

Most people draw artificial lines to separate the “present” from the “past”, and it typically coincides with their recent runs of success being “present” and everything prior being “past.” Fact is, though, that everyone who has a past of any import remembers it, is proud of it, and talks about it. Any sane Auburn fan would trade their last five years for Alabama’s history. Why? Because success and failure come and go, but what’s done is done.

There’s another benefit to not ignoring the past: perspective. Those who spend too much time harping on the pseudo-present end up, like a lot of Auburn fans have, losing all sense of perspective. See, e.g., Jay Coulter’s breathless puff-piece on the media’s take on Saban and Alabama. They assume that because a team has had some bad years that their time has passed, that they’re “washed up”, or that they’re “has beens”. I call it The Auburn Delusion.

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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.

• FanHouse :: A few posts ago, I said that Quinn and Bomar should’ve gotten stiffer penalties. FanHouse’s Brian Cook found a video that basically proves my point. Quinn, while being a snotty little asshole, tells a reporter to “get a real job” when he’s asked about the sanctions.
• Snarktastic :: Some “new math” that perfectly illustrates the mindset of Pete Carroll’s fans.
• SI.com :: Sports Illustrated tells us that one of the Auburn signees who had their grades “mysteriously” changed was cleared by the NCAA clearinghouse. If the tables were turned, you’d see the glut of Auburn bloggers crying foul. I haven’t seen anything like that in Alabama blogs this week. Wonder why.
• Ladies… :: No, it’s not college football, but the All-Star Game Bingo Board is hilarious. They need to do one for CFB.
• Fanblogs :: Some company named RedShirted.com is buying up a bunch of fire your coach domain names. It’s a little tacky that they still have Coach Hep’s domain listed.
• Tide Druid :: An Alabama Blogger found a picture of a “small” gaffe made by Saban in one of his books. Saban makes reference to “Alabama’s Jordan Hare Stadium.”
• FanHouse :: In the wake of an SI.com columnist getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar, FanHouser Matt Ufford writes the seminal piece in sourcing blogs for the MSM.

So there you have it. Good luck to everyone on this “unlucky” day.

I love blogs and I love sports blogs. I’m a huge fan of getting information from a wide variety of sources and then doing a little thinking on my own to put it all together. There are two things that have been nagging at me for the past few weeks, though.

Countdowns

With all due respect to the guys at Roll Bama Roll and Burnt Orange Nation, the countdowns have got. to. stop. These things are ridiculous. Especially RBRs. We can all count. In fact, those of us who care to see a daily appraisal of how far we are from kick-off will find any number of ways to make that happen. We do not need your daily dose of copyright infringement to remind us. This is especially true in the age of RSS feeds where, were this to become a widespread trend, those of us with interest in a wide range of football blogs would find ourselves spending 15 minutes every morning getting rid of “countdown” posts. In my mind, countdown posts are to the blogosphere in 2007 what blinking text was to the web in 1997.

If you’ve got content every day, feel free to toss a line in at the top “XX Days until Football Season!” but please stop creating entirely new posts whose sole function is to remind us that we’re still 60 days away from football season. Maybe it’s the length that is most annoying. 10 days out I can understand. 80 days out? Bleh.

Needlessly Wordy Posts

There are a number of bloggers who should learn the art of brevity. From time to time, I am one of them. Some people, however, make a habit of wasting everyone’s time. A perfect example is Dawg Sports’ T. Kyle King. Waaaay too many words. His posts could often be condensed to half their length (conservative estimate) without sacrificing any important content. An interesting counter-example is Brian Cook over at mgoblog. He writes some of the longest posts I’ve ever seen, but they are full to the brim with good info, deep statistical analysis, etc.

Of course, unnecessary words tend to produce a market effect. I doubt very seriously that even 10% of Dawg Sports’ readers do more than skim the entries. Even among the hardcore Georgia fans I doubt that percentage approaches a quarter. So maybe, in the end, this sort of thing takes care of itself.

If I could get rid of these two things, my time reading sports blogs this off season would be much more enjoyable.