Unverified Voracity 8/15

We hates them, precious. While I'm on a Buck-bashing tear, Warren St. John points out the weird Buckeye paraphenalia you can acquire, including this beauty:



Perfect for your brother-in-law who just quit the chewin' terbaccy. (OMG BUY RJYH.)

I wrote off Pierre Woods, but I hope I'm flagrantly wrong. MLive has an article focusing on him. Sounds like he'll get playing time, but it's awfully crowded at SAM all of a sudden.

FO Man Crush Part XXXXVI: More in the strategy minicamps with the Zone coverage, and a review of KC Joyner's Scientific Football 2005.

Blogspotting continues apace. Since I pointed out Florida College Sports' BCS whinge session I feel duty bound to point out Braves & Birds' demolition of same. Blog foul on me. EDSBS engages in some gratuitous Trev-bashing; count me in. IBFC blows up that Stassen overrated/underrated thing in authoritative fashion. By the way, IBFC may have some company on the college foot-statistic T.I.P., by the way. Orange44 is like a big, uh, orange version of IBFC complete with tables and parity indices and, like, Pythagorean charts. For the record, I think the Pythagorean thing that applies so well to baseball suffers hugely from college football's small sample size and noisy data--there are a lot of reasons why scoring margin is artificially deflated imposed by the game theory in football that don't apply to baseball.

And this one is totally OT as they say (no, not operating thetan): Idle At Work takes on the mess that is the Atlanta Hawks.

I may have to revise my Northwestern preview heavily. A few days after finding out that DE Loren Howard and RB Terrell Jordan are likely going to miss large portions of the season, the Wildcats suspended WR Brandon Horn for the year. That's five projected starters down: Howard, Jordan, Horn, CB/KR Jeff Backes, and C Trevor Rees. ETA on headline featuring unclever play-on-words "Mildcats": 5 weeks into season.

I vaguely remember the SWC, which disintegrated 15 years ago. The Sports Economist points out a huge series of articles from San Antonio detailing the pressures and political machinations that self-destructified the league. Fascinating section of one article:

[After unsuccessfully courting the Pac-10] The Longhorns next turned to the Big Ten.

Having added Penn State in 1990, the Big Ten was now made of universities that, in the view of UT officials, matched UT's profile -— large state schools with strong academic reputations. Berdahl liked the fact that 10 conference members belonged to the American Association of Universities.

Yet, distance remained a disadvantage. Iowa, the closest Big Ten school to Austin, was 856 miles away — but the appeal of having 10 of 12 schools in the same time zone was seen as a plus.

But after adding Penn State in 1990, Big Ten officials had put a four-year moratorium on expansion. Although admitting interest, Big Ten bosses ultimately rejected UT's overtures.

Holy crap. Totally logistically implausible... but damn, man, UT in the Big Ten. That would be strange but utterly compelling.

Rah rah goes the Oakland Press and their article on the Deshawn Sims commitment. Slightly over the top ("Michigan took a big step toward re-establishing supremacy"... uh, get back to me when we beat MSU) but encouraging. Basketball recruit guru Dave Telep is mucho in favor:

"Through four days, he went bananas out there [the Big Time tournament in Las Vegas]," Telep said. "One of the things I've always liked about him is his versatility. He's got such a unique size, body and skill package that he can do a lot of things. He can shoot the ball on the perimeter ... having said that, he doesn't forget that he can go to the blocks and just absolutely work a guy over. He can become an interesting mismatch on the college level."

123, don't suck.

2007 words on why I don't listen to sports talk radio:



Also, I don't have a working radio.

Fifteen more: What's the over under on "Mike Valenti is totally bald"? Like two years? Six months?

I usually try to keep politics off this blog, but the nation will be faced with a critical decision in 2008 that may well determine the course of history. One man can take on the job: Christopher Walken.