With Steele's College Football Preview set to hit stores June 9th (you may now Jizz. In. Your Pants.), it's officially time to start the four-month tailgate that is preseason blogging. It's the second-longest pre-kickoff tailgate nationally, bested only by the one that started in Baton Rouge last January.
First, a harrowing personal story: This past April, I moved from the beautiful suburbs of Denver into the heart of Washington, DC. Nothing against life in our nation's capital; contrarily, it's quite pleasant once you learn to block out the sirens that blare 24/7. (As a side note, last night I watched the local news for the first time since moving here. Top stories: murder, murder, gang warfare, sexual assault, child assault, murder, Disney to open new park in National Harbor, murder.) There's that, the sky-high cost of living, and the oppressive summer humidity, but the rest is gravy. Bonus for functional public transportation.
No, the problem is that I've moved into ACC country. The three places I'd lived before this were Plano, TX - the SWC/Big 12 including the last decade of the Nebraska glory years, then Oxford, OH - Ben Roethlisberger's years at Miami U and Ohio State's national championship team, then Boulder/Denver, CO - more Big 12, this time with a dash of Pac 10. The hidden gem was all the Mountain West coverage. Back to the present situation - the ACC is 2-9 in BCS Bowls, with their only win in the last nine trips being last season's *thrilling* Va Tech/Cincy Orange Bowl. That's right, they're 2-9 despite being matched up against the depleted Big East. I figure to get my share of Ohio State, USC, and the SEC... but the odds of seeing much Big 12 action or for that matter whatever Pac 10 team rises up just enough to pretend to challenge the Trojans' 35 consecutive conference titles (Quack On, Oregon) are surely slim. Instead, I'll be watching the Awkward Terrapins square off against the Cavalcade of Fail. Surely this warrants an fml. Keep this in mind if fall's postings take on a bitter tone.
NEWS!
The GMAC Mobile Bowl has decided to match the MAC champions against the #9 seed from the ACC. If that doesn't strike you as odd, what it means is that 75% of the teams in the conference would have to win 50% of their games. Last season, 10 ACC teams were bowl eligible because nobody managed to go better than 5-3 in conference, so as a result only one team was worse than 3-5. This means that teams like NC State can go 2-2 out of conference, or that Maryland can drop that game to Middle Tennessee State, and still be bowl eligible. Indeed, if Virginia hadn't been the only team in the conference to lose to Dook, there would have been 11 teams floundering around on national television after November (13 if we double-count the two in the conference championship game). By actually giving an automatic invite to the #9 seed, the Mobile Bowl is saying they expect the status quo - where all teams are equally bad - to remain firmly intact. fml.
Obama tore into Notre Dame football in a speech in Indianapolis. Previously, Obama has said that if he could change one thing in all of sports, it would be to give college football a playoff. He's done a March Madness bracket and created a fantasy football team with some high-profile writer. The guy's a real sports fan. (Not to be confused with a true fackin sparts fan.)
College basketball mega-phenom Greg Paulus is enrolling at Syracuse for grad school and plans to play quarterback. My only comment here is that he'll probably be more successful at a position where he doesn't have to play defense. Also it's tough to see Syracuse getting much worse, particularly those 121.5 passing yards per game which ranked 7th-worst nationally, so hey. The bottom six were the three service academies (option offense), Georgia Tech (option offense), UCF (.333 midmajor), and Wyoming (barely beat Tennessee).
Preseason polls are out. Lots of em. The consensus is Florida followed by Texas. (hey, it's what should have been the BCS Championship game!) Three Big 12 teams in the top 6, four SEC teams in the top 10. A 9-spot gap between USC and their closest conference contender, Ohio State and Penn State dwarfing the nine... dwarfs... in the Big Eleven. So the prognosis is a repeat of 2008?
